Jen Henderson joins Joshua Maddux on this weeks episode of In The Bunker to talk about Systems, Processes, & Procedures.

Bio: Jen was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas, and is the youngest of 2 children, both of which are now Professional Engineers. Jen is the proud wife and mother of two wonderful children. Jen was appointed to the Zoning Board of Adjustments in June of 2014 and to the Planning and Zoning Commission in Round Rock in October 2014.

Jen developed an interest in Engineering when she realized her desire to be part of the construction industry. Jens background and experience includes civil and structural detailed design engineering. She is proud of the work she does and all of the projects she is involved in. She also enjoys that everyone can see the impacts of her efforts on the community around her. If you ask Jen, she will tell you that engineering is not just a job, it’s a passion and an exciting career that she enjoys every single day. Jen also likes that her profession allows her to work on projects throughout central Texas and that she is part of a team of professionals that takes a project from the clients idea and makes it into something physical, grand and lasting. Jen currently works in site specific land development. Her current projects include parking lot expansions, water quality pond design, grading, feasibility studies and utility plans for sites in Round Rock, Kyle, Buda, Austin and surrounding areas in Texas.

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenhendersonpe/
• Website: https://hendersonpe.com/
• LinkedIn Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/henderson-p-e/

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Welcome back to in the bunker.

Every business owner faces challenges, and we love to share an unpack these stories.

Today, we have Jen Henderson in the bunker with us.

Jen started her business at the end of 2020, admits a global pandemic and has

been faced with a handful of challenges.

Running a business itself is challenging, but doing that in a time where there is.

All different types of just abnormalities in trying to start and run a

business is challenging even further.

I'm so excited to learn and hear from Jen today and super excited

to just jump into this episode.

Let's welcome Jen, to the show.

Good to have you on.

Thank you.

I'm really glad to be here.

So let's get up to speed on who you are, how'd you get here?

What do you do?.

I'm Jen Henderson.

I'm the owner of Henderson professional engineers.

We are a civil engineering company just outside of Austin, Texas.

I have been a civil engineer for about 17 years now and I am a mom to two kids.

They both play softball and baseball.

And I'm also a.

And on someone's daughter.

And that, that in itself is a full-time job.

So you and I connected through tab we're both

members of different groups in that.

And I know that has definitely helped shape, both of our businesses.

Before we hit record, we were talking about some of those

different challenges that.

You've been faced with in, in starting a business and just

everything else going on.

let's walk through that first.

One of, starting admits COVID starting in, you said you started

the business in November of 20.

That's right.

We started in November of 2020 that for frame of reference was when we weren't

sure if we needed to say home or if we could go to the office and do leave

wear masks, do we not wear a mask?

And locally, pretty much everyone was still wearing.

And using hand sanitizer all the time.

My biggest challenge in that was how do I handle the employees, what's okay

to say, and what's not okay to say.

And, do I ask them when the vaccine's available?

Are they going to get it?

Am I even illegally able to ask that?

And Navigating through that.

I think the lesson I learned out of that was just to listen to your people, listen

to their thoughts and their emotions.

And you have to roll as the business owner, which way you go.

But if you don't listen to your employees, then you might have a bigger problem.

I will say 2020.

From a business perspective, employees didn't know there was so

much uncertainty of, businesses that were not essential being closed down.

Employees didn't know if they were going to have a job or have income next week.

There was eviction moratoriums that were possibly going to get put in place.

So people didn't know if they were going to be having housing.

And so really sometimes having.

Some stability, even if it's just an office you come into and just some

stability in knowing that you're going to have a job or knowing that

you're going to have, something helps just our outlook on life in general.

I think that's, a big part of that.

And just hearing what those employees are saying.

You're right.

It's huge.

It was huge.

You didn't know if you are going to have a meal or if you're going to have toilet

paper or if you're going to have a job and you had to just go day by day and

hope that the grocery stores had enough.

And sometimes they didn't.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't wish anybody to ever relive that, that onset at the beginning was.

What's crazy.

Obviously as you were starting the business, there's elements where,

established businesses have processes and systems and procedures, and

there's this whole strategy and vision direction, that businesses have,

and obviously starting a business.

None of that exists.

It's building all that out.

What did that process look like for you guys as you

started to way that foundation?

So when we first started there, there was no system.

There were no processes.

We.

Didn't have anyone to give us direction on how to get that done

and how to get that written in.

For me, that process looked like I applied to be a woman owned

business, so I got the WBE status.

And then inside of that woman owned business, I was accepted into a program

that Wells Fargo that's on, that, that went through the traction book.

And that traction book is really an operating system.

That shows you how to put the structure and the how to write down your fish

and how to get your core values.

And it helps me really write that down on paper and I didn't have to pay the fee

that a lot of people do to get it done.

And so that to my business was a huge profit gain because we now

have this structure, we know.

Where we're going.

We at least that we're where we're going in the next one and three years.

Just picking what system to use and then doing it and making sure I got

all of the processes implemented was a game changer for my business.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

It's funny.

Before we hit record, we were chatting and.

Jen was mentioning a little bit about the whole process and

element and developing that.

And I literally reached behind me on my little shelf to grab that the book

that Jen's talking about traction I've been reading through it and, having

a business that's been in business 13 years and we've developed our sort of

mission, vision values, previously, before, we've gone through this, but.

Really what a lot of that book talks about is the aspect of

creating a operational manual.

That if you, as the business owner, weren't able to be there,

someone else could potentially pick up and run the business.

This does two things.

One, you could take a vacation for we're not talking like a weekend, we're talking.

A month can you take a month off of your business?

And the second thing is that makes your business marketable to sell long-term

because if the business revolves around you as the owner, it's not a business,

it's just it's your business that you just happen to have helpers in.

Traction is an incredible tool to help shift that, to make it a business where

you could step away for, two, three weeks or more, or potentially sell that business

or bring in someone else to operate it where you step away and do something else,

whether that's starting another business or, retiring or whatever that looks like.

And those systems and processes are really.

Yes, they are.

It has been, it's amazing once you do it, you'll be so thankful.

Just writing down everything that's been in my head is it's awesome to, for

other people to be able to read it and ask questions about it means that I can

make it more legible to everyone else.

I know one of the things for us in our business that is really.

Ironically helped us refine our process has been hiring interns.

It's something that is great because the intern who is typically

a college student is learning a skill that's in the industry.

For us it's something that actually ends up challenging our staff

because that intern is asking.

A hundred questions.

And then they're also asking questions about why do you guys do it this way?

Or why is it done that way?

And it's we do it that way because that's how we've done it for 10 years.

And it's wouldn't this be faster?

Or wouldn't this be, more beneficial to the client or, and it's oh yeah, that

would be more beneficial to the client.

And it would save about 10 hours.

On every project.

Yeah, we probably should reconsider that.

Shouldn't wait.

And so any time you're able to write that process down and have someone

else review, it is really good.

It helps you refine.

It helps you become better.

And it's hard to run a business and step out of it and take a day off if.

Everyone's calling you and texting you because they can't

remember what the next step is.

Yeah.

So obviously, as you guys are walking through business strategy and

walking through that it looks at your time as a business owner and you directing,

the team from a management perspective, obviously, figuring out staffing and

your time and those boundaries and everything else, is an ongoing challenge

that I think every company faces.

What does that look like for you guys?

So right now I've got a system for myself where I have chopped

up my day to focus on specific aspects.

Sometimes.

The business thing sometimes it's the technical pieces and knowing

how to get that process in place was huge of just managing my time.

Managing the expectations I have of myself was huge.

If you can't If you can't meet the expectations you have of yourself,

you can't expect anyone else to meet your expectation either.

So learning that.

Was it a big deal to me.

Once I got that system in place, then I started to see what was lacking and how we

can fix those pieces that are lacking so that the business can function essentially

without me and without the key leaders.

So the work still gets done and no, one's the sticking point.

We can still turn and get stuff done when people have issues or when

life happens or when COVID happened.

Yeah.

Heaven forbid someone takes a sick day and then everything

just comes to a screeching halt.

Yeah.

I know one of the things for me personally, That has been actually really

eye-opening is there's a desktop software, there's a free version and a paid version.

It has a windows and a Mac version.

And then there's a mobile app that works on your phone for both iOS and Android.

And it's called rescue time.

And what it does, is it monitors, what programs you're using throughout the day.

It checks like in your web browser, it watches what websites.

And then it prioritizes them and it says, okay, gmail.com.

That's email.

It's probably pretty productive.

YouTube, maybe not so productive, Netflix, not productive at all.

And so it then classifies them.

And then at the end of the week, Sends you a report and says, this

is where you're, 40 hours, 50, 60 hours of work went this week.

And if you're on phone calls on your mobile device, it will import all that.

And show you how much time you spend on the phone and shows you all those trends.

So then you can start to, as you start to try to schedule out your day or your

week, if you're like, man, I cannot figure out why I'm not keeping up on email.

It's Previously, you would spend, four hours a day on email and you're only

scheduling an hour a day for email.

This is a problem.

And so it's really interesting and I've recommended this to a few business

owners and I know even my company, my, my team it's cool to be able to see, at

the end of the day where your time goes and what, what you use your time for.

I would rather be productive.

Just get work done.

And if you need a minute, just get it done.

Yeah.

So there's some, yeah, there's some cool apps like that, that are out there

that make it really interesting to start to see if that's something where for

someone who's listening, who wants to maybe start to figure out developing

some better time management stuff, start by seeing where your time's going.

Don't try making any changes, just install something like rescue time.

And let it run for a week or two before you even start to try to

figure out where you should readjust.

You're trying to decide where you should set your end destination on your GPS

without even knowing where you are yet.

You need to figure that out first.

We've covered a ton of stuff.

I don't know if within, inside of, starting a business in COVID sort of

business strategy, management challenges.

I don't know if there's any of those, those sorts of topics that we've

touched on a little bit, that there was anything else that you felt like you

wanted to dive a little deeper into.

That we have covered.

I think with business strategy, I think it's important to

know that there are several different.

Operating systems you can get into, traction's not the only one.

But you know what I, the words of advice I would give someone are

just pick one and stick with it and implement everything you can from that.

And you'll see a huge difference.

If you spend your time trying to figure out which one is right for you, then

you'll never find one that's right for you because they're all different.

But if you just pick one, go with it, implement it.

I think you'd be much happier in the end.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's what I hear all the time is analysis paralysis.

Yeah, there is a hundred different CRM systems or client relationship management.

You can analyze every single one.

They have all different price points.

If you spend the next 12 months demoing them all and doing that,

you're not actually using one.

And that was before we hit record, we were chatting about, project management systems

and the company that I had referenced.

They spent $20 million trying to fix a project management issue in their company.

And they figured out that it wasn't about building a custom one or

finding the right one that fit.

It was just using.

It was committing to and using that system on a daily basis.

And that's what made a actual improvement.

And yes, the, the project management system, the business management,

the, whatever the system is that you're using may not be perfect.

And nine times out of 10, the system isn't perfect.

There's always going to be a little issue here.

A little issue there.

But a system that has some issues and has some bugs that's used, to the fullest

of its ability is so much better than a system that you just have, but never use.

I completely agree with you.

I know you've touched on a few takeaways already, but are there

any takeaways or advice that you would give to someone who's dealing with some

of these other business challenges.

Just know that you'll get through it.

Tomorrow's a new day and keep trucking forward and don't ever stop because

tomorrow's a brand new day and you'll find the solution to the problems in time.

So just don't stop.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things I want to bring up real fast is, we connected through, like I

mentioned, at the beginning of the show, we connected through tab, which is a

organization called the alternative board.

It is basically a group of peers who are from other industries.

You get together and meet and talk business issues

and solve business problems.

And have accountability not necessarily saying that you as a listener

needs to join tabs specifically.

Although we both found it beneficial and helped our business over the

years, but having some sort of accountability or some other business,

and it doesn't need to be someone in.

You don't need to find someone in your industry, but you need to find another

business owner who you can sit down and have coffee once a month and talk about

some of the issues that you're facing.

And that alone is so beneficial.

And maybe there isn't a solution.

We were joking at the beginning of the show about, the issue of paying taxes.

You're always going to do it.

You would just have to, it's just a problem, but being able to complaint with

another business owner about darn taxes are due again is a little relieving.

And to know that someone else is struggling with and going through the same

challenges is a little bit reassuring.

And just to know that you have someone there alongside you on

this journey, it's really good.

That's very true.

Yeah.

I appreciate the time today.

Been awesome having you on there's a ton of stuff that we've talked

through and really hope that you, as a listener, just processes through

all this there's so much stuff.

It doesn't matter if you've been in business for.

A week or 40 years having systems, processes, procedures, mission, vision,

and values is super critical to be able to step away from your business.

Having a solid management team, understanding time management

is also super critical.

These are all core elements that it doesn't matter.

How long you've been in business will help improve your productivity

profitability really as well.

And allowing you to potentially maybe even sell the company

or step away for a vacation.

So as we wrap up, Jen, what's the best place where people can connect with you.

So that would be my website.

That's www dot Henderson, P e.com.

That's H E N D E R S O N P e.com.

Awesome.

And we'll have that, your personal LinkedIn and your company, LinkedIn page

all in the show notes, along with your bio, appreciate having you on today.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Thanks for listening to this episode of, in the bunker.

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