This is the Daily Overpass. My name is Amiel and I make apps. I have a new dolphin (laughs)
Today, I want to talk about about how I'm not the best manager.
Okay, so I'm still in the Philippines. I'm still at the beach resort. My team left
about an hour ago and I'm staying one more day, and then
tomorrow I go back to Manila. I stay one night in Manila and then I fly back the
following day. So, it's gonna be nice to get home. But it's been really nice
to come out here and meet with the team. It's been nice to meet with the guys in
Vietnam. And it's been a really great time. I'm sitting here just outside my
hotel room rather than on the beach because I think I've gotten too muc sun today.
Today it's like really hot and I think I just - I think I just wore myself
out. I need to drink some water and just go into some air conditioning. So, there's
like the beaches over there. There's all kinds of activities, there's lots
of noise, you probably hear in the background sorry about that. I try to go
someplace quiet but the place - there's no place quiet today. So anyway, today I want
to talk a bit about how I'm not a very good manager. And what I mean by
this is that I'm not a very specific manager. I realized this whenever we
hire somebody new and they want to know exactly what to do. A lot of times, I just
I give vague instructions on ways, on directions we want to go. You know
at some point, I wanted to be the kind of person who has loads of SOP - Standard
Operating Procedures. I've known other people who do this. They'll show up,
here's our SOP, so when we have a person in-charge to this, they just read through
the SOPs, they're trained up in a day and they could just - they could just take off.
A lot of the people that I hired, they get a bit more vague instructions. So,
it's a lot more like I tell them the direction that we want to go. Years ago -
years ago I watched this video. It was actually - it was a part of the
the 8th habit by Stephen Covey which was a sequel to the 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People and it came with his DVD with all these little mini movies in
it .There was one in there called the Four Disciplines of Executiont
where which I recently just watched. I mean, I watched it years ago and it had
a big impact on me, just in the back of my head. It's one of those
things that influences you over the years, but I went back and rewatched it
just before I will talk about it now. And it is corny. I mean, it is a very
corny video. I'm gonna put a link to it, you can watch it if you want. But
basically, it's this little skit where there's like these kids playing
football or soccer or whatever, and they're - all the kids, the others,
the coach is, the grown-up coach is, he's just like you can't believe it cuz
the kids go out there, they're all just one big bunch and they're just kicking
the ball and they're not going anywhere, nobody really knows what to do. So, he
calls timeout and he brings them in and he gives them very detailed instructions.
"Okay, I want you to go up the middle over here, I want you to go over here, want you to go over here..."
And they're just sitting there, they don't understand what he's
saying. And then they go out there and just continue to do the same thing
because they don't know the goal of the game. And at one point in the
video, one of the kids gets the ball away from the big huddle and he kicks it on
to the wrong goal. So, a lot of what we've been doing this week when meeting
with the team is like each night, we've been sitting up and and having a chat
and talking about stuff. Getting to know each other, laughing a lot about
some of the problems we had in the past, in the past few years that
sometimes my levels of stress are way too high, sometimes I freak out about
stuff. I's nice to laugh about those after the fact. But a lot of
us just talking about the goals going forward and they know the goals but
we just talk about the new things for the new year, where I want to
see things going. The things we're doing right, the things we're doing wrong,
because I'm not very specific. Because we're at the point - we're so
early on in this company that I don't know enough to know what works best.
So, we try a lot of different things, right? If it was something where I knew exactly
what to do all the time, then I would sit down to write SOPs. Now, this actually -
with development, I am actually, I am a micromanager when it comes to
development. I mean, I feel sorry for my developers when they work for
me, because I tell them specifically what I want and I will check the code and
make sure. But other stuff like social media, design, you know, how we promote
ourselves, that kind of stuff, still up in the air. We're always changing course and
and doing stuff. So, I rely a lot on very smart, talented
people. And it's one of the reasons why we have such a high turn-turn rate is
because some people just can't handle that vagueness. You know that
this is where we want to go. We want to put the ball into that goal, can you
help me come up with ways to do that? This is my - this is what I'm thinking
right now, I want to do it this way, but if you see a better way to do that,
please let me know, because the nice thing about my team is we've
worked for the last few years. They see all the same numbers I do, they see
all the same appstats, they see, you know, they work with the same clients. So,
we know what works and what doesn't. It is nice to sit down and just have a
brainstorming session of how we can go forward. Eventually, I wanna get to the
point where we do have the standard operating procedures. We've
identified the best way to do this, the best way to do that, and then there's
certain things - there's certain things that we're where we do like with when it
comes to some ASO techniques, we think this works best because we've tried
other things. Responding to reviews a certain way we know what works
best. You know, and so that's kind of pretty much set in stone, but you always
be open, if everyone knows what the goals are, then we can move forward
on it. Another book that has been a big influence on me and a lot of
entrepreneurs is the E-myth Revisited. If you're thinking about starting a company,
definitely look into that book. My brother recommended it to me and I
read that years ago and that talks about building of businesses' scales.A
business' scale is not like a few really smart, talented people working on
stuff because that doesn't scale. I have a business right now
which will not scale. I could not sell my business to somebody else because
without me in it, it just - (laughs!) So, this is one of the things we, what we have to
move forward in the future is put in processes in place.
Processes and procedures and we do things pretty much the same way all the
time, but get them documented in everything. The E-myth Revisited talks
about the the different levels of companies like the infant stage,
adolescent stage and everything like that. And eventually gets to the point
where either stays small or it grows. And in order to grow you have to be
able to put procedures in place, so that anybody can come in.
And it talks about the - it uses McDonald's a lot as an example you know
at McDonald's - everything is - you know, they've identified the best way to do
something. And everything's precision-timed and everything.
And when somebody comes in - if you've ever worked at McDonald's, and I've
worked at three different McDonald's when I was a teenager, in three different
locations, you go in there and there's no, there's nothing vague about
it. They'll tell you exactly what to do, they train you up on fries that first
day, it's just everything is down to a science and a lot of
businesses are like that. It's not easy with bespoke service businesses like
like app development, but a lot of it should be procedures and
things like that. That's kind of what we're -what we're looking at. So,
when it comes to management, I've never really been very good at it. I'm
much better - I can manage developers, I can manage developers just fine. A lot of
the other stuff, it's still feeling our way around and we've had a lot of
success with it. We've had a lot of success but I always think there may be
another way. And if everybody knows the goals and knows where we're trying to
get to, you know, like right now - hmmm, should I tell you this? Okay, right now, I
want to get to the point where we have ten clients a month by the end -
within twelve months time. I want to get ten new clients a month and right now
we're like two. So, it's really how could we get to that point.
One thing is we can't do it work in the way we do. We just don't scale. I
mean, that' the Michael Gerber the e-myth guy, in one of his seminars, he
says, most businesses, you know, the reason they don't they don't take on more
clients is because it would kill them, because they haven't put things, they
haven't put the procedures and everything in place and be able to
bring people on. That's what we plan on doing over the next over - the next 12
months and and that was a lot of the focus of speaking with these guys
here, speaking to the people in Vietnam and just in general. So, everybody knows
which way we're trying to go. And you know what, it may not i- t may
not work out, but we have to have a goal. We have to have something to work towards.
So anyway, that's it for today. I hope this has been useful.
I should be, hopefully, a little less pink tomorrow. And that's it for today! I'll
talk to you tomorrow!
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