Don’t let Assumptions Kill Your Business

from WrapFam Unleashed - November 2024

Build Local Buzz for Your Business

By Matt Richart

During the past three years, my partner and I have been drinking from a fire hydrant. This is a good thing. When you decide it’s time to change the way you do business, how you communicate, and how to re-engineer all your processes it can be very challenging. From the very first day of hiring a business coach, it has changed the game for us completely. Once you realize what got you here won't get you there sets in it completely changed the game for Dallas and myself. We have been working daily on how to re-align our company by modifying our pricing, procedures, culture, vision, mission, protocols, touch time, and how we market our company correctly. While all of this is very challenging it is very exciting. Especially when you see these goals get completed and working properly it sets the tone on how you will conquer each task.

It took some time to realize that just because you changed your culture today doesn’t mean it could change again a year down the road. Just because we set up new installation procedures doesn’t mean that they could change or be modified as well. My point is that once we realized we needed to be content with constant change it began to make things a little easier. What was the frustrating part for me was taking the time to make these changes and then at times, they would go back to the old ways. The wrong way. I had some weeks where I felt as if we were taking one step forward and two steps back. I can still remember having great team meetings where everyone was engaged, hyped up for the week's work ahead, communicating with transparency, and the overall vibe in our shop was at 100%. Then a few days later it was if that meeting and feelings never happened. We would have some rookie mistakes along with tasks not being completed, install failures that shouldn’t have occurred, job quotes not being produced properly, and gaps in communication that were head-scratchers. It’s also very frustrating when you spend good money to be coached, trained, and lead to being a more professional company which is still our ultimate goal. When you train across the country and teach classes on how to sell, market, manage your team, manage your company, and communicate in the sales world while having these same issues become overwhelming at times. I would ask myself sometimes “If you talk the talk, you better be prepared to walk the walk”.

After the first year of being coached, we learned so much about who we really were and what we really are about as individuals and most importantly business owners. The best part about growing as a business owner and as a leader is the identification of your strengths. The other important part is identifying your weaknesses. This is when I had a blinding flash of the obvious. This wasn’t taught in our coaching or anything that I had read. The word and issue that popped into my head was Assumptions. Our entire team, including myself, were all assuming a lot of things. We had a large installation job that had issues with the installation along with parts not being re-installed properly and post-heating problems. When we started to reverse engineer the job and why we had issues assumptions came into play. One installer assumed the sections were post-heated properly. Our lead Install manager assumed the door handles were installed back properly. The sales team assumed the vehicle had passed quality control and the customer was clear to pick up the vehicle. A few weeks later we had a new client we were working with, and the updated estimate was not emailed on time as promised. Because of this failure, we lost this potential client and future work with them. After reverse engineering this issue with our sales team, we identified that three of us assumed it was sent and assumed a followup had occurred. That was not the case and once again we let assumptions try to kill our company. The other eye-opening situation was I assumed as a leader that one of our team members was happy and enjoyed being there. After sitting down with our team, we realized that they were not happy and to be honest they had become a cancer to our company. I had assumed everything was great and that our entire team was working in harmony. This is when Dallas and I sat down and realized that we were letting assumptions kill our company. We also identified that these assumptions became an issue when we were extremely busy with deadlines and pressure from a busy workload. Regardless, this was an unacceptable excuse that fell below the line. What we finally realized is that you can’t assume anything. Assumptions were stunting our growth and had become its own type of cancer in our organization. I have said this before, and I will continue to say that while this is common sense it doesn’t become common sense until it becomes common practice. This is when we implemented the Don’t Assume Anything rule. Assumptions can be easily rooted out by communicating properly. The other hard pill to swallow was realizing that being lazy engaged assumptions. I truly believe when you start to become lazy you start to assume things. It’s human nature to act this way at times.

We all have confidence in each other here at Digital EFX Wraps along with respecting our entire team and their identity as an individual. But if we continued to assume everything was taken care of we would be in big trouble. This also can hinder your growth along with the overall morale of your company.

When we finally decided to not let assumptions kill our company we were dedicated to identifying those trigger points. All our processes were re-engineered again to ensure we could not assume anything. The more questions we ask of each other and our clients we can eliminate assumptions. Having constant meetings about our workload, scheduling, artwork, and other facets of our business allows us to answer any questions we may have. Also, identifying issues that may come up in the future allows us to be prepared for any issues that may arise. I also think that asking tough questions or questions that may seem uncomfortable, it can clear the air from any assumptions. I think it’s a great business practice to underpromise and over-deliver. This way our client has no assumptions as well and understands our timeline, pricing structure, abides by our procedures and has a great overall experience with Digital EFX Wraps. When your client or your team member says “ I thought” then you immediately know that assumptions had been made. I also want to hammer home the point of don’t assume everyone around you is doing ok. Make sure you ask people around you how they are doing. Ask your team if they have any stress or issues at home that you might be able to help with. If you see someone online struggling or sense some negativity reach out and just say hello. Don’t assume that everyone around you is doing well. I think this was the first step of working on my assumptions that became the easiest. Change is hard for everyone. Quick change is very difficult to achieve. Slow change is easier to overcome and more attainable in my opinion. So take each situation as a stepping stone on how to be present, communicate properly, ask tough questions, be honest with yourself, and trust your team.

If you can start to avoid assumptions in your business and personal life you will start to see everything grow around you. Including yourself!