How To Become An Inc. Best Workplace

Chris Ronzio:

Welcome to Organized Chaos. I'm your host, Chris Ronzio. And as you heard in the intro today, we're talking with Chris Gwinn. Chris, welcome.

Chris Gwinn:

Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Ronzio:

Thank you for being here. All right. So I know you suggested some topics that we're going to talk about today. And today for everyone listening, will just be a little bit more like a discussion. Chris is one of our amazing certified consultants and brought some topics to the table that he and I are just going to kick around. So let's get into it.

Chris, I know we're going to get into paper checklists and platforms and being a best place to work, a EO Accelerator program, probably among other things. But let's see where the conversation goes. Where do you want to start?

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EO Accelerator Program

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Chris Gwinn:

It's top of mind, I actually went to an EOA dinner earlier this week. Noticed that actually one of the other consultants joined EOA. So why don't we maybe start there?

Chris Ronzio:

Okay, cool. So for anyone listening, EOA or the Entrepreneur Organization Accelerator program, that's a tongue twister, is a business group, an amazing business group for growing businesses, fast growing businesses that have hit a certain size, but they haven't yet qualified for the EO program. And EO's qualification is a million in revenue or in some other markets around the world, it could be a million euros or local currency.

So I was in the EOA program years ago. And you're in it now, is that correct?

Chris Gwinn:

Correct. Yep.

Chris Ronzio:

Awesome. How, how long have you been in it?

Chris Gwinn:

So we joined back in, well, I guess I joined back in June of 2021. And it's been an awesome experience so far. So for all the listeners out there that are maybe a little bit unfamiliar with how the EOA program works, you are assigned an accountability coach, which is really, really cool. You meet on a monthly basis with some other like-minded entrepreneurs likely wouldn't be in the same exact industry. But the whole purpose of the EOA is to be able to share experiences and actually create accountability.

Those monthly accountability meetings with our coach have been really pivotal in a lot of my own personal and professional growth. But on top of that, they've got four learning days that have been really, really cool too. They focus on people, strategy, cash, and execution, right?

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah.

Chris Gwinn:

I can't remember that correctly. And then there's obviously a ton of other really, really cool events through EO that you get access to. So it's been an awesome experience so far.

Chris Ronzio:

The next few minutes are probably just going to be a huge pitch for EO and the EOA. But if anyone's really interested in digging into this, I was on the Scaling Up podcast with Bill Gallagher. Bill has been involved with EO for a long time. We did a whole episode about the EO Accelerator program. And so if you really want to dig deep and hear more about the program, you can go and check out that podcast episode.

But let's just talk about your experience so far and just maybe masterminds in general. Or I can share when I got into the program, what it's like. I'm sure it's maybe a little different now.

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah. I guess just taking a step back, I'm a solo entrepreneur. I don't have a business partner. I'm usually bouncing ideas off of me, myself and I, and trying to just pull from experiences from other. And I read a ton of information. I always listen to Chris's podcast and all the other Trainual content that's put out. But it's helpful to be able to meet with like-minded entrepreneurs that can share these experiences and really help you feel a little bit more assured that you're not in this alone.

So for me, what's been really helpful is just talking through some of the issues that we currently have that we're working through, that are preventing us from accomplishing our larger goals. And trying to see how their experience might be able to apply to potentially our issues. And so that's been really pivotal for us.

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Getting Vulnerable With Other Entrepreneurs

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Chris Ronzio:

Yeah. So I think there's a couple huge lessons there. The big thing for me when I joined that program is I'd gone to business networking groups before, and this is entirely different. It's not a networking group because you think of networking as trying to sell each other, really. And there is a strict non-solicitation thing in this group. And you mentioned when you're put into these group masterminds, forums, whatever they call them, you're not with any competitors. And a big reason for that is there is a strict confidentiality requirement too.

So this is a group that you can really open up and be totally vulnerable with about decisions you're trying to make, flaws you feel like you have, shortcomings in the business, things that you're like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't pay the taxes right. Is that illegal?" And it is so important when you're running a business to have a person, a mentor, a group that you can lean on with that kind of stuff, because it can be lonely trying to make those decisions by yourself. So a hugely valuable tip for anyone listening.

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah. I know one of their core pillars is that you need to get naked fast. And I think as a lot of entrepreneurs, if you're maybe in a social setting, you might maybe embellish a little bit. "Yeah, sales are great. Everything else in the business is great." But when it really comes down to it, usually there are some underlying issues and maybe there's something that's in your way. But to be able to be a little bit more vulnerable and have someone else share their experience, that might actually help you to be able to solve your own issues.

Usually most of these entrepreneurs they are maybe just a couple of steps ahead of you, and they've likely gone through similar issues, similar tribulations. And it's been really, really helpful. It's clearly a lot of information and lessons that aren't just taught in your basic education, college. There might be some of this type of learning experiences during an MBA, but I found that this has been an awesome experience so far.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah, I agree. It's unlike anything else because people, friends, or even other business acquaintances on the outside, a lot of times they only see the highlights because a lot of people will just post great news and stuff like that on LinkedIn or wherever else. And so from an outside perspective, you may bump into someone and say, "Man, it seems like you're crushing it and everything's going well." But you don't know that we're getting evicted or the biggest customer just canceled or somebody just quit the business. These things that happen internally, that just cause tons of personal stress and turmoil, it's really helpful to have other people to lean on and say like, have you ever experienced something like this? And learn from what they've done. So, I agree. It's an amazing thing.

And it's a cool journey too. I remember when I first found out about that program in 2008, 2009, my college professor was a chapter president for EO in the Boston area. And so he told me about this program and Accelerator was really new at the time. He said you should apply for this. And I didn't yet qualify. And so for me, it was a goal to get into EO Accelerator, which I think the threshold is what? $250,000 in sales?

Chris Gwinn:

Yes. Correct.

Chris Ronzio:

And so that was a big goal for me to get to that point. And then after that, it's just like, you can see all right, now I see the next goal.

Chris Gwinn:

Yep. No, it's obviously with ... Not obviously, but with the new Accelerator program, you're below, you're slightly above 250. And the goal is really to lean on everyone else's experiences to hopefully be able to get above the million dollar threshold. And then at the million dollar threshold you would apply or you would be eligible to be able to join EO. Which Chris you're in EO, so maybe you can ... I'm not in EO yet. So maybe you can even talk about that too, what they might be able to experience after graduating from EOA.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah. So I'll say it's very different. First of all, one of the facilitators we had in my Accelerator program, he made it crystal clear that the goal of Accelerator's not necessarily to get you above a million, but it's to show you what it takes to be above a million and let you make the choice.

I thought that that was a powerful statement because not everybody wants to have a business that has 10, 15, 20 employees that is doing, operating at that level of a multimillion dollar company. A lot of people just want to have a lifestyle business that pays them really well personally. And they make $500K a year in profit and they spend all the time with their kids. And it is totally okay to go in either direction.

So that was a lesson I learned in Accelerator. For me, the journey of trying to get to a million, I feel like I went about it all wrong at the beginning. I was trying to cobble together any sales, any dollars I could get because in my head a million was the finish line. I was like, if I can get X number of clients to pay me this dollar per customer, I'll take $5K here and $10K here and $15 and $1K here, and $2K, $500 for this random thing here. And I was just in a constant cobbling mode trying to get to that million.

Chris Ronzio:

One of the mentors that I had said, "A million is not the finish line, it's a milestone. You need to have a business that doesn't just grow at all costs to a million dollars and then implode. You need to have one that can grow way past a million dollars." That's how you get to a million is by unlocking what's going to take you to three, five, 10 million. And it was so insightful for me.

So when I finally got into EO, it's a lot different. It's more like forum specific where you're leaning on the experiences of others and it's less educational. I actually think that EOA's curriculum around the fundamentals of a business is something that every EO person should be forced to go through because I feel like now growing through EO and I'm in another group, YPO now, I feel like I've just been applying so much of the stuff I learned in EOA or Accelerator that are the fundamentals that a lot of EO members skip over because they don't apply to the organization until they're over a million.

So I recommend this for anyone to go through those fundamentals. EO members are actually allowed to attend the EOA learning days that you mentioned, just so few of them do. So anyway, that was my experience. It's probably longer winded than what you were looking for.

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah, no. And I think you actually brought up a really good point. It sounds like maybe, I don't know if you pulled this from one of the strategies days, but that was one of my bigger takeaways is that when I first started the business, I really started to ... I mean, I've got a diversified background. I started in investments. I then worked my way through my dad's operations.

And when I first launched the business, I started to do way too much. I was trying to be like the master of everything, which ultimately you become the master of none. And so trying to basically just try to collect sales in every single way. And you could probably almost relate it to maybe even like a roofer who could do all of these other, probably HVAC and other types of services. But it really does benefit you to get very refined in your strategy and figure out what your niche is, what you do best, and really trying to be able to standardize all of your operations around that specific niche so that you can become really, really good at one single thing.

So you're really just trying to dig as deep of a moat as possible within that one specialty so that you can really hit on and be able to target that entire market. And so that's something that I really learned throughout this entire EOA experience. And from one of the actual, I believe it was the strategy day that I became a little bit more refined with that. And trying to eliminate some of the services or solutions that didn't make [crosstalk 00:13:52].

Chris Ronzio:

Elimination. Yes, addition through subtraction.

Chris Gwinn:

Exactly.

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Focus, The Future of Your Business Depends on It.

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Chris Ronzio:

That's it. I probably don't talk about this enough. One of my favorite books I ever read was this book called Focus: The Future of Your Business Depends on It, by Al Ries or Al Rice or something like that. So great book for anyone that's listening. They tell all these stories about how you can overload people with choice. That when you walk through the supermarket aisles and there's a hundred flavors of Cheerios or something, it actually makes you sell less of each of the Cheerios. You can apply these simple marketing lessons to any service of business in particular, I think because we're all tempted to just serve people.

We all want to customize and do things a little differently so that we can serve the widest number of people possible. Rather than like you suggested, making that moat, making that focus, the niche and saying, this is what I do really well. I'm going to do this thing deeply, and just get tons of these customers. So, I think it's a huge thing to unlock to grow through and pass that million dollar mark.

Cool. Anything else on EOA before we move on?

Chris Gwinn:

I guess the only last thing that I would mention is that I think I haven't really had any type of personal issues that I've learned because of it. But it actually can help a lot of entrepreneurs to be able to cope with some other things that go on as, and more of your personal life as it comes to managing a business. And just as an example, maybe you're potentially breaking up with your business partner or maybe you're going through a divorce. And being able to lean on those experiences of others, I think can become very valuable. They don't exactly teach that, there's not a training course of how to break up with your spouse while managing a business, or how to break up and have a clean break with a business partner.

And certainly whenever you're mixing in maybe equity and ownership percentages, it can get a little bit hairy. So being able to lean on those experiences while I haven't gone through that, I know that those do happen. And I know a lot of other entrepreneurs within EOA and EO that really benefit from leaning on others' experiences on that.

Chris Ronzio:

Totally, like how to fire your brother-in-law or even just managing a personal household budget, or how much should I pay myself in salary? There's just so many issues that it's fun to think back on those experiences because I again, I said this before, so foundational to just learning how to run a good company.

So anyway, it sounds like we're both giving a double thumbs up for that program. I know there's tons of others out there. So just find some program that delivers this benefit, I think is the tip.

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Becoming An Inc. Best Workplace

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Chris Ronzio:

So speaking of trying to make a better place to work, you wanted to talk a little bit about the whole Inc. thing. Is this a goal of yours?

Chris Gwinn:

It is a goal of mine. We're hoping to not only ... I'd like to be able to hit the Inc. 5,000 list, but I think the more important goal for me is really becoming a best place to work. I think when you have employees that are excited about showing up for work, while I always want to make sure that everyone's happy, I want to work with people that enjoy the work that we produce. I think it does actually lead to an increase in productivity. It increases our overall customer satisfaction because our customers are working with happy employees. They're working with people that actually want to work rather than people that are at maybe a DMV or maybe just dreading coming to work every single day. So it is one of our larger goals that we're hoping to hopefully land on that list in maybe the next couple of years.

It's funny. You mentioned the DMV. So I think that's such a typical, like the cliche, everyone knows that as like, oh, everybody's just grumpy there. That or the post office, I think are the two examples. One of the companies I met when I was doing consulting was a third-party DMV information website. And they had a bunch of people, awesome business, La Jolla, California. And their whole thing was culture. I remember leaving a meeting at their office thinking they put the best culture possible as a spin on the DMV thing. So now I always think of them when people mention the DMV.

But yeah, I mean, I feel totally the same way. If people don't want to go to work and they're not happy and they feel burnt out or not fulfilled, or just are constantly looking for other jobs or they feel underappreciated or under compensated or any of those things, it's like you're stacking the deck against you for success. Like how we talked about just the million dollars, isn't the goal necessarily, it's like a scalable business is the goal.

Chris Ronzio:

It's sort of the same with like, it's not about the revenue necessarily in a business if you have a scalable business with a team that can scale because they're happy and fulfilled and productive, then your business is going to succeed. I would say anyone on the Inc. Best Places to Work list isn't struggling for their next sale. You take care of your people and the rest almost takes care of itself.

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah. And something that I guess, I'm really interested in hearing some of the steps that you took as far as, I don't know if it just happened organically, or were you a little bit methodical when you came to trying to get Trainual on that list for you?

Chris Ronzio:

Well, the first thing was setting it as a goal. So like you have, in the pre-show notes I was reading through, I knew it was a goal of yours. We did the same thing. We went into two years ago saying this is a goal for the business. So it actually started, I think three years ago, we just had vaguely on there, like a number one best workplace. And we were thinking in terms of local publications. And then as the business grew and we started ranking higher on the local publication list, the Inc. one hit our radar. But we had been telling the whole team, our goal is to be the number one best place to work. And so we were saying it over and over again. I feel like that was step one.

But then once you say that goal it becomes a filter for how you act and what you do, what you roll out. And so every time we wanted to do an event, or we were thinking about, we've got a meeting this afternoon, for instance, with a bunch of the leadership team has to come to the office, and we're catering in lunch. That's just one of those things that you do because you want to take care of people. You're thoughtful. You think about people, you're like, Hey, you're going to be there during lunch. Let's make sure we have food for you.

And that's a really simple, common example, but I think, think it's just that a thousand times over and over again. It's like, how do we care for people, be thoughtful, make sure that they have a path here to be fulfilled, give them praise. And so, there's a ton of little things I think that add up to being a great, a best workplace.

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah. And I'm guessing that you probably would agree with this based off of the fact that you do offer all Trainual new employees, I believe it's 5,000. If they're willing to maybe leave after the two weeks or a week? So something that I always want to make sure that I do every single time we have conversations and we have regular check-ins with all of our employees is, are you happy with everything that's going on? And if you're not happy, that's fine. Then let's figure out something else.

I'm not going to try to force your hand that, hey, I'm going to lock you to the desk and you need to work here. And whether you're happy or not, I just need you to produce that work. I'm not in this to be able to force anyone's hand into doing anything that they don't want to do. And if it's not the right fit for you, I'd be happy to refer you out or try to set you up, or maybe enroll you in a training program, or maybe something even outside of our company that would help you get to a place in your career that you would be more satisfied with.

So we always try to have very open communication when it comes to what you're doing, what you like about the role, what you like about everything that we're doing. And if there's any opportunities to make you a little bit happier.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah. Just the feedback loop is crucial. I would say a little twist on that is we like to try to ask forward-looking questions about like, how do you hope your job is different in six months or 12 months? What do you not want to be doing anymore that you're doing today? What is the next role you think that you might have here? Where are some areas that you personally want to grow in the business? Because those kind of questions start to shape an understanding of someone's personal career goals.

And then you start to notice when there's misalignment. Like if somebody for instance says, "I want to be the CEO in 12 months." Then you in the back of your head, "Whoa, that role's not going to be open." And that's an extreme example, but you start to see those things of you know what opportunities could open up in the business. And if someone is outgrowing your company, that's where like you said, you can step in and say, "Let me help you find some other opportunity. And we're all good. It was great working with you." But I think it's a constant future-looking conversation to make sure that you're not just happy today, but you'll be happy for the foreseeable future.

Chris Gwinn:

Yep. I 100% agree. And I love that approach too. We also, at Great Lakes Advisory, we run on an operating model called EOS, it stands for entrepreneurial operating system. And in it, it's a framework to make sure that you're following, you're really focused on your 10-year vision, those big, hairy, audacious goals. And then reverse engineering it, making sure that your three-year picture is in line with your 10-year goals. And your one-year is in line with your three-year. And then you focus on all the rocks.

But it's during all of those quarterly all-hands-on meetings that we're really making sure that everyone is aligned with the bigger picture. And I also just, I really try to encourage more and more feedback and allow the employees to dictate or really heavily influence how they want the company to be able to evolve. Why do they want this company, what would be awesome for us to be able to offer in a couple of years, that would make you super excited to show hope to work every single day? And making that one of our goals, or maybe it's a one-year or three-year goal for us to be able to accomplish and provide.

Yeah, I mean, that mission/vision work is critical. I agree, because that's what you're always ... It's one of those things you're trying to stay aligned with people on, but it also gives them a longer timeline. Rather than joining the business and saying, "Oh, I might stay for a year. I might stay for two years." If you can latch onto a four-year, five-year target that they feel personally committed to, I think that helps retention as well. Because you're all moving in the same direction to hit the same goal.

Chris Ronzio:

And then when you get to that milestone or you get close to it, you start to have conversations about what is the next BHAG? Or what does that look like? And is this still the right company for you? But I guess to summarize this whole section, I think it's about communication and conversation and just being thoughtful and proactive. But any company can be a best place to work. You just, you figure out the basic building blocks of a good business model, and then you pour your profits and everything back into your people. And it's just this amazing flywheel that keeps going.

Cool. All right. Well, I know the last topic we wanted to come around to here was the whole idea of checklists and project management platforms and playbook software. And I'm sure you get this a lot in the consulting work. So we should do a hypothetical. What is the question you hear most often around this from a client or anything like that?

Chris Gwinn:

Simply put, how do we actually know whether or not they actually did it? Or how do we know that they actually followed our process? And I think it's a good question. I think, well, we're going to help you to be able to document your processes. We're going to be able to help you create training that really captures the why. We're not big brother. We're not going to actually be standing over each of your employees' shoulders to be able to actually confirm whether or not they actually followed your processes. But I didn't want to make ... I just want to say, I didn't want to interrupt you there.

But I was just going to say, so I guess our framework to be able to actually confirm whether or not employees are following these practices is really based off of really a four-pronged approach. And we believe in documenting processes, we believe in creating standardized operating procedures, and then creating training, which communicates the why behind everything that you do and why it's so important.

It's like the difference between when you're maybe a parent and saying, "Hey, son, I want to make sure that you actually buckle up." And if you just tell them to buckle up, he might say, "Hey, why do I need to buckle up? It's not that important." But if you just tell him to buckle up, he probably won't do it. But if you communicate well, "I want you to buckle up because it's actually going to prevent you from getting injured, if we ever happen to get into a car crash. And it's really for your own personal safety." He's able to understand the why. And the same thing is true with all of your processes. If you just dictate, say, "Do this. Do this. Do this. Do this."

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Can You Over Engineer Checklists?

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Chris Gwinn:

"Well, it seems unnecessary, I don't need to do that. I'd be a little bit quicker if I just didn't do one of those things." But if you can communicate the why behind everything that you do, all of that, those processes tend to resonate a little bit better and ensures that everyone's aligned. So we always ensure that we're documenting processes within standardizing all of those operating procedures, creating training that communicates the why.

And then the overlay to actually confirm whether or not employees are following your practices is creating a system of checks and balances. And that can really come in the form of either paper checklists, maybe you had a project management software. And for those unfamiliar with project management softwares, there's applications out there like Asana, there's Trello, there's Wrike, Basecamp, a ton of other, Monday.com. And you can also just create, and that's where you can actually create digitized checklists and forms to actually create a little bit more accountability.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah, no, I think that's a great framework. I was laughing in the middle of your story because I'm thinking of my kids. I have a seven year old and a four year old now. This weekend, I'm yelling in the back seat of like, "Why isn't your seatbelt on already?" And so going through the conversation of like, "Well, why do I need the seatbelt?" "You could fall out of the car. I don't know, you could open the door, you could fall out of the car." Like, "How fast is it dangerous? Do I have to wear it in the driveway?" So my seatbelt process would be very heavily documented for my kids.

But no, I think your framework's spot on. So what I usually say around this is when people think of checklists or project management systems that you're checking a box to recognize the completion of a task. It's a very different thing than when you're training someone how to do the task the first time.

So a perfect story around this is in my video production company, my first business, when I was first getting into all this systemization stuff, I read The Checklist Manifesto, which is an awesome book. And I left that book thinking, okay, I need checklists for everything. And so I made checklists for every production process that we had, every pre-event planning process, staffing, equipment preparation before we'd ship it out, fulfillment. Everything had to have a checkbox associated. And so for a standard event that we would film, we had something like 150 different steps from pre-production all the way through the production and post-production and closing the events out, accounting and all that.

Chris Ronzio:

And so those 150 steps were assigned out to all the different members of the team that did those things. But as the business started to grow, and we did not just one event a week, we were doing three events and five events and 10 events a week. Those people would get assigned the 150 tasks times the 10 events that week, times the 50 events that month. Our production cycle could be three months from planning an event to closing it out. So I had people that were sitting in their project management system on 3000, 4,000 tasks. And it is just so unmanageable.

So when we looked at that, they were telling me, these tasks, these are things that I know how to do all these things. And I feel like you're just standing over my shoulder. You need to know the second that I complete every task? Are you even looking at the system that shows you that I completed it? And I realized, no, I wasn't. What I was doing was just making sure that they were appropriately trained and then wanting to know as every event moved through the stages of pre-production, production, post-production, where was the event at? I was more interested in capacity than I is in task management.

And so it was a big lesson for me personally, but what came out of that is that the doing is different from the learning to do. And that once someone knows how to do something, you don't need to look over their shoulder and track every micro step of that thing. And so I think people have great intentions when they get started with checklists, but you can definitely overdo it. Checklists are good for tasks. They're good if you've got a temp labor force. They're good if you need to granularly watch over someone's shoulder.

Chris Ronzio:

But if you yourself micromanaging people that are just really great employees, you can start to move away from the granular checklists and focus on just training and role development. And then the accountability piece that you're mentioning, that just relates to KPIs and how you're measuring someone in a business. It's not all about task completion, but sometimes it's about the end result of what did the client rate the experience with you? And you start to measure people based on more the results than the task. So I'm curious what you think about that?

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah. I think you brought up a lot of really good points there. I completely agree. You definitely can over-engineer the level of detail of checklists. There's almost two different kinds of checklists. There's the learn-and-do type of checklist, which might be the really, really super heavy detail of read this step. And then I can do this exact same step. So I would almost think about this maybe a recipe to be able to create, I don't know, Beef Wellington, or some type of elaborate type of dish.

Or a do-and-confirm is more of a simple milestone-based type checklist. And I think that the goal there is really just to confirm that the major milestones are completed. And so I think that there's a time and a place and it'll depend on the workflow and really the process at hand. But it can become a little bit overwhelming. So if you do put way, way too many checklists in place, and there's always maybe the issue that, hey, we're just checking off these items, whether or not they're even confirmed.

Our best practice is to keep it a little bit simpler, keep it one page. And really making sure that you're trying to prevent mistakes from happening rather than just assuming that all of your employees are incapable of actually following your processes. So I try to use it more of a, I guess, more of a bumpers on following your processes. As long as you complete the high-level steps, we're going to be able to actually obtain the same exact result or outcome.

Chris Ronzio:

I like that. So the reference checklist is just to make sure you don't miss anything. I think the pre-flight checklists with airplanes are like that, right? It's like a reference to make sure you didn't miss any of the steps. But it's not like you're logged into a project management system, clicking on all of those as you go. Whereas like an Ikea build is something that, you need to look at it and then do the thing. And look at the next step and do the thing.

So, checklists are a loaded topic. That's all I'll say here, because we've been asked, since Trainual was in its infancy. If we, when we might introduce some form of task management. And my stance so far has been, when you get into task management, you get into due dates and assignment with tasks and recurring tasks. And really that's like the task management, project management systems' job. They're great at that. And so, at some point in the future, do we introduce some capability around this, on the reference side specifically? Maybe. But we'll see, I have to follow along.

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah, no, but I think I still think that they do serve a purpose. I think it just needs, it's sort of a case-by-case basis. And I think what you're really again, the main thing is that you're trying to do is just eliminate mistakes and eliminate some of the guesswork and confirm that the bigger milestones are being completed. So I think you have to look at each of your processes.

I think less is more, more times than not. And so try not to over-engineer. It creates overwhelming to-do list items where you're actually creating, making your employees less productive because they now have to actually follow and actually confirm all of these items. Make it more easy for them. And just try to remove some of the guess work and hopefully eliminate more mistakes.

Chris Ronzio:

Well said. That's what it's all about eliminating mistakes. And that's why we document everything, right? This has been awesome. Is there anything you want to summarize, like one big lesson you want to leave people with for them to take away from this?

Chris Gwinn:

I would say that, I mean, it goes back to our proven framework, is that to be able to get all of your employees aligned, it all goes back to documenting processes. So that's where we think that Trainual is an awesome application to be able to document your processes you can create. Then it goes to standardizing all of those operating procedures by creating standard operating procedures. Again, Trainual is an awesome place to be able to house all of those SOPs.

And then creating training to be able to communicate the why, Chris and I talked it earlier, in the episode about buckling your seatbelt and actually getting all of your employees to understand the reasoning behind or the rationale behind all of your processes. And then using a case-by-case basis to figure out where paper checklists or maybe a project management software, it might make sense so that all of your employees are completing those milestones.

Chris Ronzio:

Amazing. Well, I always love catching up with you. I think this was so insightful. So hopefully everybody that's listening got a ton of value out of this and can look into the programs that we mentioned, and take some nuggets away from this. Chris, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you?

Chris Gwinn:

Yeah, of course. Feel free to reach out to me, actually at my cell phone, (248) 312-9211. You can reach out to us on the web as well, GreatLakesAdvisory.com. Or by email, C.Gwinn@greatlakesadvisory.com.

Chris Ronzio:

Amazing. Most people give a social handle or a website. And you're like email, phone number, here's my [crosstalk 00:39:10].

Chris Gwinn:

Reach out to me. I mean, I think all the socials on there. You can feel free to reach out to me by LinkedIn.

Chris Ronzio:

I love it. No, that's even better. Put it out there.

Chris Gwinn:

I'm going to cut out the middle man. And you don't even have to go through that, just reach out to me directly.

Chris Ronzio:

So cool. Well, Chris, thank you for everything that you do out there, helping companies. And it was a pleasure chatting with you. Hang on here for one second until we upload the recording. But for everyone else, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time on Organized Chaos.

Chris Gwinn:

Thanks so much for having me, Chris.