Do you feel like your business depends on you for everything?

If you’re constantly firefighting, answering questions and dealing with the same issues over and over again, the problem might not be your team… it might be your systems.

In this episode, Bill is joined by business coach and author Marianne Page, to talk about her book Simple, Logical, Repeatable and how systems can completely change the way you run your grooming business.

They break down:

• Why most grooming businesses lack clear systems
• How simple routines and checklists can reduce daily stress
• What the MC Freedom System is and how it works
• How to build a team that doesn’t rely on you for every decision
• Why consistency improves both client experience and business growth

Marianne shares lessons from her time working with McDonald’s, showing how even small grooming salons can benefit from structured, repeatable processes.

Because when your business runs on systems instead of memory, everything becomes easier – from training staff to delivering a consistent service to every client.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or stuck in the day-to-day running of your salon, this episode will help you step back and start building a business that works without you being involved in everything.

As always, I'd like to thank the podcast sponsor, Lopay, the low-cost payment platform that helps you keep more of the money you earn.

You can find out more and sign up for Lopay here:

https://merchant.lopay.app/ref/PETPASSION2500

Listeners of this podcast get £2500 of fee-free transactions.

And if you’d like support building a stronger, more profitable grooming business, visit:

https://petpassiontoprofit.com/

If this episode helped you see where your systems could improve, make sure you subscribe and share it with another groomer who’s ready to make their business simpler and more efficient. 🐾

Welcome to the Pet Grooming Business Podcast with me, Bill Betts, where we give practical business advice to help you grow your pet grooming business.

This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay, the low rate payment app that gives you more.

So without further ado, let's get going.

Right.

Welcome everyone.

Welcome to our next episode and today is an extremely exciting episode.

It's something that I've been or someone that I've wanted to speak to for a very long time.

I first read her book in 2020 and here she is, Marianne Page.

She's on our podcast.

Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really happy to be here.

As somebody who uses dog grooming services.

Yeah, it's great to be able to support your community.

Excellent.

Thank you.

So we hope to introduce you as a best selling international authority, you know, a speaker, a business coach, you know, you, you're ticking all the boxes here.

Oh, well, it needs to be done.

It needs to be.

I, I, to be honest, I'd love to be one of those things, but, but actually I really do enjoy, I, I enjoy being all three.

Yeah.

Excellent.

And today we're going to be talking about your book simple, logical and repeatable.

And like I said, I picked this book up or I was recommended this book by our mutual friend Alex Siri, my business coach.

He recommended that we sort of have a look at this book and I've, I've still got it here, it's on my desk and it's on my desk for a reason because we quite often refer to it on our coaching calls and I've got the notes written on it and the pages folded over.

But maybe you could just give us a quick precis of your career before writing a book and what, what kind of brought you to the point of writing simple, logical and repeatable?

Yeah, yeah.

Crikey, that's a big question.

Yeah.

So, so I, I, my career, 27 years was with McDonald's and I have to say that I joined as the most naive 21 year old you're ever likely to meet.

I just, I'd led such a sheltered, lovely upbringing, had a lot of fun and enjoyed McDonald's.

And within 12 months they had made me a manager, restaurant manager.

A million pound restaurant with two 18 year old floor managers and a team of 50 full and part timers to manage.

And you know, I'd love to say it was because I was just amazing, but actually it was all down to the fact that everything was systemized.

You know, there was a McDonald's way to do everything.

And also they are very good at developing people managers.

And so, you know, they, they sort of, they put me through, put me through the car wash.

I came out the other end as a, as a restaurant manager.

Was I the best manager in the world?

Almost certainly not.

You know, some of my, some of my compatriots would say no, you were pretty average.

But to be honest, I got the job done.

And as from where I started, I'm, I'm quite happy with that.

But over my career with McDonald's, you know, as I say, from my starting point of know nothing, they, they challenged me to, okay, leave the restaurant, go in and, and be a training manager, you know, training franchisees and, and other managers.

Then, okay, we want you now to go and set up a customer services department.

You know, it doesn't exist at the minute.

You go and set it up, get the team that you want in, put all of the systems in place.

Great.

Then it was okay.

Now we want you to run a, run four departments, Printing and fleet management.

And I didn't know anything about any of these things, but I was challenged.

And I guess they saw potential, but they trained me, they pushed me into.

And that is what I love when I go into smaller businesses now, I look for potential.

And where there are people who've got bags of potential, it's not being used.

But anyway, went through 27 years at McDonald's and then when I left, I actually went into the blood service for 10 months, which was the longest 10 months of my life, I have to say.

Oh my God.

Going from a really systemized, people driven, performance driven business to the blood service, which was just so chaotic.

Oh, well, well, just government run.

Is that a government run service?

Everything.

Yeah, but everything was, you know, that they had this, this sort of top level of management who were.

Yeah, I hate the management and the staff.

It's like, you know, it should be we in us.

And it always.

At McDonald's, it was always we in us.

And, and this place was just.

The culture change was so dramatic that I, I needed to get.

And, and to be honest, most of the people in the blood service were literally counting down the days and until they, it was their retirement or, you know, they'd done their term and they could get out.

And I sort of felt like I was in a coffin and if I didn't get out, it was going to close on me and I become one of these, one of these people.

Institutionalized.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, so, you know, I'd never, I'd never really had any desires to start my own business.

But being that 10 months in the blood service actually really opened my eyes to what I had.

It was a guy, Daniel Priestley.

A lot of your listeners may, may have heard of him, may have not, but he talks about standing on your mountain of value and not appreciating it because you're looking elsewhere.

And that 10 months opened my eyes to the mountain of value I was standing on.

So, yes, so I set up, set up my own business.

And initially I was just going to focus on customer experience and customer service.

And then somebody said to me, you've been at McDonald's for 27 years.

Why aren't you talking about systems, Systems and processes?

I'll come to the word process in a minute.

But I actually, the first book I wrote was actually called Process to Profit.

And it was literally just a brain dump of everything that I knew about systems and how I felt, you know, a business could systemize based on what I, what I learned at McDonald's.

And to get to the question you asked, when it's simple to go repeatable over, over the course, then of crikey, must have been five or six years of running my own business, working with small businesses, getting used to that huge change from corporate to small business.

I mean, it's a completely different language.

You know, it's.

Yeah, it's just so different.

So working with small businesses, understanding what, what in McDonald's would work for small business and what won't and, and how to position it in a way that a small business owner would understand, that led to simple logic, repeatable, and, and I literally wrote the first draft in two and a half weeks because it was just right.

I've got it.

It's this, this and this.

And you know, as you know, it's called the MC Freedom system.

And you know, systemize your business so it runs, you know, so an 18 year old could run it or whatever it says on the front, I can't remember.

Now it's systemized like McDonald's to scale, sell, franchise.

You're growing.

Brilliant.

Thank you for reminding me.

That's all right.

But it, but it's like, you know, that, that was it.

It was like the, the MC Freedom System until McDonald's came after me.

I was going to say, was there any sort of comeback or issues?

Well, to be honest though, Bill, it had been out there and I had been, you know, all over social media talking about the McCreedom system.

Yeah.

And you know, I'd even gone through the whole trademarking I'd spent a couple of grand going through the process properly.

I'd waited the six months.

Oh, God, they're gonna go home.

They're gonna come.

They're gonna come.

They didn't come.

It was like, right, we're in.

And then apparently one franchisee spoke to the legal department.

Yeah.

And I got this horrible letter saying cease and desist.

And then I had a phone call and went in and saw them and it was, it was all fine.

And they told me I could keep the book as it was going forward.

You know, could I not talk about Mook?

Could I put a disclaimer on the website that said, I am not McDonald'?

To be honest, I was happy to because a lot of the thinking, you know, I, I, none of that is actually McDonald's, if you, if you know what I mean.

It's my take on McDonald's, your interpretation.

So.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And yeah, sorry, go on.

So that's how I got there.

I'm not going to get a cease and desist, let's say, am I?

We, we heard your podcast.

No, no, no, not, no, not at all.

No, it's because I do.

I can still talk about the McPherson system because it actually is in the book.

This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay.

Low pay is half the price of sum up and zettle.

So you keep more of the money that you earn.

Rate starts at 0.79%.

When I read the book, we had a, we had AIDS at animal care, our pet groomers, and I think we were, it was around lockdown.

We had staff on furlough, but we had about six or seven staff at the time.

And you know, systemization and the running of the day to day business was very hard work.

It was very stressful.

And I kind of read the book and thought, well, and I did wonder how, how it would translate from a multi million international franchise business, how would that actually translate down into a, a very small, you know, very small team.

But like you said, the way you've described it in the way that you go through the systems and, and explain what you want to be doing, like how to extract yourself as the business owner and so that your team runs the business without you being there or team runs with you, it was like, there's like light bulb moments coming on, you know, and as I said, there's, there's that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

There's pages in here that are over, that are turned, that are creased, like where I've turned it over.

I've got, you know, I'VE got annotations in the notes, you know, survey questions.

It's the first time that we've actually having read your book, we went out to our customers and said to them, what do you want?

What would you like?

What would you like us to do?

You know, and we also did like, staff surveys and stuff like that.

Just, let's just have pages that I, that I've turned to.

Like, how many regular customers do you have?

Don't really know.

How many customers have you lost?

Don't really know.

Why have you lost them?

Question mark.

That was like that.

My notes next to the, next to the questions.

And it, and it starts to sort of bring to light all the hidden, all the hidden questions that, you know, we just don't ask ourselves as a, as a small business, because as a pet groomer, it's like you go and do your course, you have your logo, your Facebook page, your diary.

All right, let's get going.

We're off.

We're off.

You know, it's a business and it is, and it's so easy to get really busy and then grow your team.

And then a few years later, you look back and you're like, my God, what's happened?

You know, I've lost complete control of my vision.

That's another thing.

Like, you talk about vision and plans.

I've lost complete, I've lost my vision.

I don't know why I started this.

I don't know what's going on, and I just want to pull a duvet over my head and hide.

Yeah, well, those first few years are all about making money.

And I talk a lot about this because when I first started, I, I, I'd left McDonald's with, with a nice sort of nest egg, shall we say, and my setup for businesses.

I went out, I went out and got stationery.

I got, you know, I got a branding company to create a brand for me.

Oh, my God.

When I think about it now, I think I've still got some paper from 15 years ago.

Oh, it just, I made so many ridiculous mistakes of spending, spending money I, I hadn't made.

And I, I love the, the most successful businesses, I believe, are the ones that start out with some financial friction.

Like we have to make money to pay our mortgage or to be on PR bills, whatever, whatever it is, because they, they are, they're more focused and they're more driven.

But you, you have to have an understanding of where you want to get to.

And then you have to build a roadmap that's going to take you there.

And that roadmap is not one big road.

It's several lanes that you have to, you have to keep each lane moving forward as well as, as well as the bigger picture.

So, you know, so, so looking at, you know, where you want to be as a business in terms of revenue is great.

And a lot of people, I'll say, you know, show me your business plan, they show me a spreadsheet with numbers on it.

It's like that, that's not a plan, that's, that's a dream of, you know, I want to be a million pound business.

How many people still say that anyway?

But it's okay.

So if you do want to be a million pound business in three years, how many customers does that need to be?

You know, what does your team size?

So, so what does your team need to be?

How many customers do you need to have and how are you going to attract them?

You know, what is your physical setup need to be like?

And you know, are you going to be able to work out of your, your back room or, you know, are you going to have to have an office and what's the cost of that?

And so it's, so it's really thinking through all of those lanes and then say, okay, if we want to be million business in let's say, 10 years, where do we want to be in three in all of these lanes, where do we need to be in three, where do we then need to be in one year?

What does that mean for the next 90 days?

How are we going to move each lane forward?

And sometimes a particular lane might not need moving forward for six months, but at least it's on your radar.

It's not completely forgotten about.

Physical premises are often completely forgot about in terms of development and investment and involvement.

And also what are the financial triggers for you starting your first team member?

Yeah.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

Because this is so pertinent to the pet grooming world, I think, because quite often the trigger for taking on the next team member is, oh my God, the phone is ringing red hot and I can't service all this business.

Which then triggers them going out to get an apprentice or hire another groomer.

But what, what's missing in between all of that is the recruitment process, you know, understanding who you want, understanding who you, who you're looking for, understand your values, understanding your, your, your vision, mission and value and, and for your business.

And then understanding the financial, you know, constraints around hiring and how much it's going to actually cost.

You to hire someone.

Yeah, this is, this is it.

It's like we have the, the base idea, but then we don't pad it out with any of the, any of the.

And also, and also bill the big one on the back of that in terms of how much is it going to cost you?

And this is almost certainly true for your guys.

I was working with a microbrewery last week and the team of 12, the business owners, who, one is responsible for actually designing and building a particular beer, the other one who does sales and so on, and their sales director, manager.

The three of them were doing the driving to deliver beer.

Covering five days a week.

They would, they were literally driving around the country with beer.

I said, but, but what are you gonna, you know.

Oh yeah, no, that beer is late being launched because I've been driving.

It's like, yeah.

Oh my God.

What are you doing?

That's a, that's a.

God.

What's the minimum wage?

I think it's about 12 pound 50 job.

You know, it's not a minimum wage job because apparently there's new tech techniques to lifting big heavy kegs.

Yeah, but it's, but it's, it's not a, it's not a 200, 500,000 pound an hour job.

It's a really, anybody, almost anybody could do it.

And, and it's the same with your groomers.

You know, they'll be losing time on grooming to spend time answering the phone or you're billing, you know, billing customers or whatever it might be.

And it's, it's like, no, wake up.

How much beer, how many more liters of beer would you need to sell every month in order to pay for that driver?

So how many dog, cat grooms would you.

Did you groom anything else or is it all just dogs and cats?

Dogs, cats, yeah, yeah, Rabbits and guinea pigs for some people.

But yeah, but this is right, because I always say that our secret sauce at A to Z was we from day.

For 22 years we had the business and from day dot pretty much we had a receptionist.

Now I think there's a, probably a few people out there that would argue, well, surely a receptionist is like dead money, you know.

But I think actually that receptionist was a real investment and our secret sauce because like you said, Emma, who was like the, the head groomer, you know, her pay really should be focused on grooming and turn and taking it, doing the work and quality assurance.

But the receptionist is there answering the phone, doing the bills, doing the customer service, taking the payments.

You Know, making sure cash flow is coming through, driving the inquiries and stuff.

So.

And I feel because of that level of customer service, that's what helped us to be really busy.

So.

And actually change the name of receptionist.

Receptionist sounds like dead money.

It sounds like somebody just sitting there filing the nails.

They are, they are your front of house.

Yeah, yeah, front of house.

They're your customer service representative.

They are the person who builds the relationships.

Yeah.

With, with, with you, with your clients.

You change, change your mindset around that because they are massively important.

But yes, you need to, you need to, you need to work with Bill and work the triggers, work out your triggers because it is, there is a, there is a trigger point.

Like I'm, I'm earning enough that I'm not going to panic because I know that I can get three more clients in as a result of, of earning this, earning this, hiring this person.

But then it is about, and you know, people will be go, oh yeah, but I don't want to manage people.

I don't even want to.

There are other ways of hiring a customer service person, especially online and over the phone.

You know, they, they don't need to be on your payroll.

They don't need to be full time even.

Yeah, but, but you've got to, but you need to have them.

Yeah, I've got a good example of this actually.

I have a client now who works from home.

I think she only works three to four days a week because she's got a little, a little girl and she's actually gone out and hired a phone answering company that's virtual.

And she said to me the other day, and obviously there is a, there is a cost to it, but she said to me the other day, I'm so, it makes me so happy.

Like I'm grooming the dog so I get to spend the time with the dogs and I see my phone ringing and I'm content because I know that that phone is being answered by human.

In the uk, they're going to take a, they're going to ask some questions, they're going to take a message and then they're going to email me with the, with the details.

And I, and there's a fear around, well, people will just then hang up and go and find the next dog groomer.

But she said that no, actually people do wait.

Once they've had their inquiry dealt with, they do wait for my return call.

So even.

And again, like this groomer works from home.

People would perhaps describe her as a small business, but she's thinking big, you know, and she's like investing in her business.

Yeah.

And also she could put live chat on her, on her website or, you know, on Facebook or whatever.

And that also be handled because there's nothing worse than somebody putting live chat on their website and then you wait two days for an answer through live chat.

Not sure if this is live.

I think it's dead as a parrot.

Yeah.

Just.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Yeah.

And of going back to that business plan, I've actually designed a business plan planner and I was really happy because.

I was thinking you have through lovable.

Yeah, that's it.

Yes.

I was taking off in my head everything you were saying about designing a business plan.

So it goes through like your startup costs, how much it's going to be, and then it goes through your, like where you're going to be working.

So your salon costs, your rent and stuff like that.

But then the last part goes through your client avatar, like, who are you going to be working with?

How are you going to attract them?

And then it also talks about the threats to that.

So what are the three top three threats to your market and what's the top three threats to getting people into your business?

So we, you know, we're building contingencies into our, into our business plan.

You're talking about another avatar for your client.

You also need an avatar for your ideal team member as well.

Like what if you, if you are, if you are actually going to hire, even if it is not so much, if it's a call answering service, that's, that's a different kettle of fish.

But if you're, if you're hiring somebody to work from home and you know, pick up, pick up the phone when they, when they see it coming through, whatever.

What is, what is the DNA of your, of your ideal team member?

What are, what are their values?

What, what, what are they must haves and what are they must not haves?

So that when you come, if you come to advertise to them, you're actually.

It's like a marketing ad.

It's like, you know, this is, this is, you know, the purpose of our business.

This is who we are.

This is what we love doing.

This is, you know, this is why we love doing.

This is why it was set up.

This is the purpose of the role, you know, it's crucial to our success because.

And this is the person we're looking for written in the first person, as in by the person that you're looking for.

You know, in their words.

You know, I love a Day that's full of variety, where I get to talk to.

To, you know, lots of different people.

I love, you know, being a service to people and building relationships, that sort of thing.

And then somebody's reading that ad going, oh my God, that is me.

Or somebody else is reading it going, oh, that is so John or Julie or whoever, because they, they recognize the person in the ad.

And, and that's so many ads are, you know, wanted.

Customer assistant must be able to answer the phone in a pleasant manner.

They're so like bullet points rather than,.

Oh, yeah, they're so dull.

You know, hourly rate and, you know, it's like, well, yeah, I need a job rather than, oh my God, that is so me.

Where is this job?

Let me.

I must have it.

And what I say with my clients is, with.

When it comes to recruitment is like, you can, you can teach skill, can't you?

But you can't.

It's very hard to teach values.

It's very hard to put values into people or embed values in people.

So, no, absolutely higher.

Absolutely 100 higher to.

To shared values.

Yeah.

And then, you know, even rocket science is trainable.

Is.

Is my view.

You know, you can teach anybo body to do anything, given the time and the aptitude, whatever, but oh, my Lord, you can't teach people to care.

And I think that the biggest thing that comes out for me around this is slowing your business down.

There's a lot of things that are done within small businesses which are done very quickly because if there's a.

There's a real pressing need for it, like my phone's ringing off the hook, I've got dogs coming out my ears.

I need more stuff.

I need more stuff.

And we, we then generate this kind of cycle of.

I think Robin calls it like a sales cycle of doom.

You know, Robin White, our.

My coach, he.

He calls it a sales cycle of doom where you're really busy, so you add more staff.

And then to service the staff, you need to get more dogs in.

So you're really, really busy.

So then you're like, oh, I need more stuff.

So then you get more staff in.

But what you're not looking at, what you're not thinking about is your pricing and your profit and your profit margins.

You might be, you know, if you've got loads and loads of dogs coming in and you do a price correction increase, you could actually just earn the money that you want without actually having to.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

But also that whole cycle of bringing people in without there being any Solid foundations to, you know, walk into.

Then it just becomes chaos.

You know, they're like 10 different ways to do.

To do every job.

There's 10 different ways to take a, you know, customer's details.

It's.

Yeah, it.

That's when it really becomes chaotic.

Absolutely madness.

I think if Emma, my wife, is listening to this, she'd be like, yep, that was me when I joined Pet Passion to Profit in November.

It was all in Bill's head.

It wasn't really like, nothing really.

The last few months she's been sort of extracting out and we've been building systems and putting in place, like, processes around this.

But I suppose the message for me today is like, less is more.

Or, you know, something when we're in the police was like, slow is fast and fast is smooth.

Or smooth is something like that.

But by slowing the whole process down, you can actually, okay, it might take you a bit longer to hire someone, but then that person might stay with you for a few more years, then maybe hire wrong and then really, like regret.

You've definitely got to slow down to go faster.

Yeah.

Because once, once you've got everything in place and the hiring thing, it drives me mad when people hire and then because it was a pain to hire, they then just settle for somebody who is much less than ideal.

You know, just.

They're just not who they thought they were when they, when they, when they hired them.

And for me, a team member doesn't become a team member until they've finished their probation and you are really happy with them.

And if you're not really happy with them, you've got to let them go for their goods as well as for yours.

You know, there's no, there's no failure in not being right for each other.

And you've got to let people go because they will ruin your.

They will ruin your business, they'll ruin your life because there's so much stress.

You know, the sort of people that you take home with you, you know, for anybody who's come into dog grooming from, you know, corporate or other businesses, you know, you've all, all come across people who you worked with who just were never right, were always like, we're waiting for them to come in the door to understand whether you're going to have a good day or not because they're so moody or whatever it might be in small businesses, you know, every space in that team is precious and, you know, they've got to be worthy of a place in your team, not just get it because you know, they've, they can literally just do the job.

You know, they've got to, they've got to care, they've got to love what they do.

You know, life's too short to work.

Work with people who don't care or who are slap dash or who don't work to your values.

We used to have a guy who everyone had a nickname in the police, but we used to have a nickname for one guy called.

And he was called the Dementor.

And it was like he sucked the life out of you.

So I think, I think that came from a movie.

But yeah, we can all think of these people, can't we, in our lives that we've worked with.

And as like you said, as a small business, especially pet groomers who perhaps will have one or two employees in a very small salon, you know, working five days a week, you, you end up spending more time with them than you do with your family.

Sometimes I gotta be right.

But it's also developing that sort of we and us culture rather than, you know, me, I'm the boss and I have staff and my staff just come in, they do the job, they go home, you want to, you want to try and, and you know, encourage them to have ideas or if you've developed a way to do something and they think there's a better way to come and talk to you about it, and then you agree either why you always the way you want it done because you X, Y and Z, or actually, do you know what, that's a great idea.

I hadn't thought of it like that.

And you're, you know, the person who's at the coal face doing the job day to day.

Might go well.

Since we've introduced that bit of software, though, one of Bill's forms, that's not necessary anymore.

It's not logical anymore.

Which is where the simple, logical repeatable comes from.

It's got to be simple enough for people to understand.

So if there's anybody who has come from corporate, please ditch the corporate language, keep it simple.

But then make sure it's logical.

Make sure that I would walk into your salon and understand why you do things the way you do them.

Because, you know, if somebody understands why they, they get it, you know, we're, we're all, we're all the same in all, in all sort of parts of our lives.

If we understand why we're being asked to do something, we'll do it.

If we don't get why, then we have an argument and then repeatable Obviously.

So that if one person goes, you have captured what that person has been doing so that the new person coming in, it's much less pain.

And that's.

That's the bit that people generally forget.

Yeah.

And I want to dig into the systems and processes because.

And the culture.

So I suppose the culture elf grooming business was always like if Emma wasn't there or if.

If someone had something happen in front of them.

The culture I felt was always like, what would Emma do?

Like Emma was the.

The leader.

What would Emma do in this situation?

That was kind of the culture that we.

We kind of embedded within our staff.

But we also sort of systemized our grooming process.

And I wanted to talk about systems because people might misunderstand what we mean by systems and they might just think, oh, it's like computer systems.

But systemization is bigger than that, isn't it?

Yeah, it's bigger and also it's smaller as well.

For me, a system is just a simple, logical, repeatable way of doing something.

That's all.

I think the language of systems massively gets in the way of people systemizing their business.

Even the word process, which I said I would come back to having written a book called Process to Profit.

I hate the word process.

It shrinks a little bit of my soul because it's.

It's one of those words that sounds boring that, you know, you see this shutters come down in team members and you said, I've developed a new process.

Great.

A lot of code comes before my eyes, you know.

Well, process.

Yeah, process.

Standard operating procedures, like really small businesses and they're talking about standard operating procedures like just talk about how to guides.

You've got a simple, logical, repeatable way of doing something.

Develop a way of doing it that you can all accept is the right way to do it and then it becomes our way of doing it.

So whatever your dog grooming business is called, it's our way of doing it.

In the same way that you've just described of what you were working to as your wife's way of doing it.

It's our way.

We have agreed that this is the right way to do it.

We are fully bought into it.

We have captured it with ideally a how to video.

But if you must type a document, then feel free.

But it takes so much longer and so much longer to.

To update when you change your way of doing it.

How to videos are so just so much the way forward.

So.

And then it's that consistency as well.

Embedding that system into your into your staff.

And that's obviously, you know, you might have to catch up members of staff, but also embedding it when new members of staff.

But I suppose it's having real clarity around it when, as the business owner, to start with, as to what that system is.

So just for an example, something that my wife used within our pet grooming business would be a system of doing a haircut on a dog, you know, and she, she invented this system for herself because she came out of training school with a book called Notes from the grooming table.

30 Days of sort of basic knowledge, opened up a salon and then just.

Right, right, hit me, guys, you know, and then she.

She would find herself with a Westie or a Scotty or Bouvier.

They were quite popular.

When we opened up on the table, thinking, what do I do?

Like, where do I start?

What do I do?

So she came up with a system and she knew that for every dog, she would start at this one place and that would be like the right leg, you know, do the right nails, do the left.

Left legs.

Now let's do the rear.

Right, left, now rear, right legs.

Now, as you know, and she'd work around this dog systematically whilst, you know, doing all the little bits around the dog whilst coming up with a plan to groom the dog.

So over the years, that kind of started to form its own little mini sort of how to groom a dog system, which we then taught the staff how to do, which meant that if a staff member had to pop to a loo quickly or was distracted by a customer or, you know, had to go home because, you know, poorly, any one member of staff in that building could look at that dog and go, right, where were we on the system?

Yeah, what happened with that?

I suppose.

And again, the secret sauce to our business, I think, was we were able to turn out consistently good haircuts when we knew that every nail was cut, every ear was cleaned, you know, absolutely.

Nothing was missed of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And nothing was missed.

Did she record them?

Well, no, not.

Not so much.

We didn't go down that road.

That's where your book, you know, 2020 would have come across the book.

And then we would have been like starting to write and.

And we went out and got handbooks and stuff like that for staff.

And we didn't get to the point of recording it, but it was.

Everyone was singing to the same.

To the same song sheet.

I mean, the most important thing anyway is one to one training.

That that's the most important thing.

But as As a backup to one to one training, being able to watch a video over and over and over again.

Or as you, you know, as you're there alone with the dog, panicking, be able to.

Right, right, let me.

Yeah, of course, of course.

It's that without having to go and ask, it just, it just makes, you know, and on, you know, on, on reception, the customer service person, you know, to have one, one right way to do.

To do each task, each routine task that they do every day.

How they answer the phone, do they answer it in the way that you want the phone answered or that you agree is the best way?

You know, that's, it's, it's that.

It is.

That difference between.

The difference to me between the words staff and team is that staff are the people who get taught how to do stuff, but they.

They almost leave their brain at the door and pick it up on the way out.

Whereas team members, sort of.

They buy into the business.

Obviously not physically, but they buy into the business and it.

And it's almost as if their name was above the door.

They care that much.

They don't want, you know, if they were out in the pub and somebody was saying, oh, my dog had a terrible haircut, you know, they would defend and say, well, actually, you know, brush it.

Yeah, it's.

Whatever, whatever it is, they would say, but you know what I mean, it's, it's those, it's.

It's like a loyal team who are working together, that we and us.

And the more you can, the more you can work towards that.

Even if they're not, as I say, even if they're not on your payroll, but you work with them regularly or they're, you know, external consultants or they're your suppliers.

That.

Building a, Building a community, which is basically what you've done, Bill, haven't you?

Haven't you just built a community?

You.

You all are really supportive.

You all really care about the same thing.

And that's.

If more businesses could be like that a lot, there'd be a lot less mental health problems, I hope, but also the business would be just a lot more fun.

Yeah, it's when the business owner feels they have to have all of the answers and then they have to control every aspect of everything.

And there is control and then there is working together to a shared standard, to an agreed shared standard.

You know, if, if it's controlled, then it's.

You don't get a team who take ownership.

Does that, does that make sense?

It's not, you know, you want to be working out the best ways together and then sharing those with new people that come in to replace people going out.

Because, you know, ultimately, as somebody told me, everybody leaves, even if they leave in a box, they do.

And.

And you're right.

And part of the.

I suppose, part of the culture, but also the system of grooming a dog in A to Z was everyone was allowed to check each other's work.

And there was a no blame, no fear sort of culture.

Yeah.

So if Emma had done a dog and Morgan walked, happened to walk in and go, oh, I think there's a little bit just hanging out, you know, a little bit of a bit on the ear, then Morgan was allowed to go in, like, snip it off or trim it or thin it or tell Emma about it.

And there was no, like, oh, that's my dog.

What are you doing touching my dog sort of thing.

Yeah.

Was it.

It's like that whole very British fear of giving feedback.

You know, we, as Brits, you know, we are the people who.

The waiter says, did you enjoy your dinner?

And we'd hated it.

We go, it was fine, thanks, and then just vow never to go back again.

We don't.

You know, we use sarcasm.

We use humor.

We just avoid completely.

And the more you can get into thinking about feedback as either recognition or developmental feedback, you know, you don't get crossed with a driving instructor who.

Who.

Who stops you crashing or who.

God does.

A young girl up at our livery yard nearly ran into me the other day because she came up to a junction and it was like, is she gonna stop?

Is she gonna stop?

Oh, my God, Yeah.

Anyway, so driving instructors who take their lives in their hands, they give feedback, and we just take it because they want us to pass our test and keep them safe.

We want to be safe and pass our test.

So there's no conflict, there's no confrontation.

In a lot of businesses, feedback is seen as really negative.

It's criticism rather than developmental feedback.

Why are you giving somebody feedback?

If it's to piss them off, then why are you giving somebody feedback?

If it's to help them to improve and inspire them to want to improve, then it's developmental feedback.

And that's.

You know, it sounds like that is the culture that you.

That you built, which is amazing because not many businesses have it.

Sadly, she learned that from the vets and through the negative culture that in the vets that she worked in.

But I remember Daniel Priestley sort of saying, when it comes to, like, Google reviews, you know, many corporate companies go out and pay people for feedback.

Whereas when we get a one star, two star review, we're actually getting that feedback for free, you know.

And yeah, it hurts.

It hurts, you know, because it's our little, our baby business that we're getting some, some criticism about.

But often I encourage people to sort of step back from that feedback and you know, over a period of week or so, just sort of reflect on it.

And is there anything that they're telling you?

Like is there stuff that you can improve with customer service or your, your.

System and can you go in and answer it and offer them, you know, offer them a next haircut for free or whatever?

Not necessarily.

Can I call, can I call you up and talk this?

Yeah, that's it?

Well, yeah, but you can do something about it.

Did I, I think I got a one star review for simple, logical, repeatable and I, I did not take it well.

I was like, oh my God.

Oh my God.

It was, it was, yeah.

What to say?

It was, it was.

Not that I remember.

It was clearly a marketing tool and there was nothing actionable in it.

Wow, you haven't read it.

Okay, is this somebody I know who just doesn't like me?

Yeah, but, but you know, it, I, I get upset.

Like you just said, it's, you know, it's, it's your baby, it's your business, but if you can do something about it, then it's it, it is absolute gold.

Absolutely gold.

Well, one of the, one of the really good questions as well to ask a team member to come back to, to team, you know, when you're, when you're ideally sitting down with them at least once a quarter, you know, what can I do to help you improve?

What can I do to, to take blocks out of your way or.

Because quite often feedback is a one way street.

It's you telling somebody what they're not doing right and them listening.

Whereas if you can, if you can make it a two way, what can I do better?

Yeah, employees.

There are so many ideas, don't they?

Yeah, they can see it from the outside in.

Whereas sometimes business owners are too busy in the business.

They don't see the opportunities.

Yeah, and that's a really interesting point that actually takes me back to planning because it's that hamster, you know, hamster on the wheel.

You know, you never, you never look up.

You just constantly, oh, today, today, today, react, react, react.

And you don't, if you don't get off the hamster wheel and get up on your hind legs like a meerkat and have a good look round, then you could be missing opportunities or missing potential issues that are coming or, you know, you miss that Google review that you could have responded to.

You know, at least I, I was thinking about this when we were talking about planning, you know, setting aside, I don't know, half day a week or one full day a month just to, just to really think about, you know, your planning, working with your app, you know, but really think about your planning.

Where are you at in terms of progress with where you want it to be for the next 90, for, for 90 days?

Have you just let something completely slip and not touched it?

How can you build in time to, you know, to get it done without, you know, or do is have you passed the trigger point where you really should have brought somebody in and that's why you're struggling to find time to do all these things.

Yeah, really.

McDonald's are brilliant at being meerkats.

They are constantly on the lookout for issues or opportunities.

Constantly.

We did a bit of meerkatting last night in our coaching call with my program members and we were looking at tasks.

So many pet groomers get quite overwhelmed with the, you know, it's hard enough doing the haircuts and keeping the customers happy, but then running the business behind the scenes is, like, demanding.

And I think this is the same for all small business ads, isn't it?

And we were looking at breaking tasks down into daily, weekly, monthly tasks.

So it's a new month, we're recording this on the 1st of April.

So my task today, 1st of April, is to send my bank statements to my bookkeeper so that they can start reconciling the month before the previous month.

Yeah.

But then one of the big sort of things that came up for everyone was, I don't have time, time, time, time.

And I was sort of trying to explain, well, if you've identified a task like writing up grooming notes on your system, you know, maybe you have to sort of plan that into your day and weave it into your day so that you kind of create time.

So if you're booking a new appointment, don't put the phone down to the customer until you've booked it in the system.

Like, don't write it on a piece of paper to then go back to it.

Keep the customer on the phone, chat to the customer whilst booking in the.

Booking in the.

In the diary and little things like that isn't there and.

No, absolutely.

And it is, it is all little things.

It's like, what is going to make this most efficient.

Right.

Well, it's obviously if I keep the customer on the phone while I'm, while I'm booking it in.

Great opportunity to build a relationship and so on.

The other thing is to, to batch tasks that are like each other together.

So if you've got to do financial tasks, do them all in the same two or three hours.

Literally block out time to do all of your financial tasks.

If it's, you know, some people hate doing financial tasks.

I'm one of the people.

I have to definitely set aside very clear time so my brain switches into financial mode before I do those tasks.

But if you then do them all together, you get into a rhythm and it, and it flows so much quicker than right, I'm going to groom a dog, then I'm going to do that, then I'm going to groom a dog, then I'm going to do that, then I'm going to do my notes, then I'm going to groom a dog, then I'm going to go back and do that financial task.

You see what I mean?

It's like if you, if you actually just say Monday morning, I'm not going to do any dogs until I don't know, 10 o', clock, 10 o'.

Clock.

So right, I'm gonna, you know, even if you've got a kid, get my kid off to school, I've got, well, maybe it's 11 o', clock, then I'm gonna have a couple of hours before I do my first dog.

If you haven't got kids, you've got no excuse.

Just get up earlier, eight or ten, do those tasks.

They also, they're then out of the way and you can enjoy what you love doing, which is, which is grooming.

But, but really thinking about, you know, do I have to be creative?

Am I going to, you know, go into your system and create some, some social media posts, do those sort of tasks together, do, you know, do the writing up of notes, you know, what goes well with writing up notes in your mind, in the way you work, Put those tasks together and then be really strict with yourself about the times that you do those tasks and the times that you allow yourself to groom.

I'm not going to be allowed to groom until I've done those tasks.

Okay, let's get, let's crack through them.

Because routines effectively are just processes.

Yeah, this is it.

And processes.

I had to write this down.

But even when it came to writing notes on our, our pet grooming system at the end of the, so this was the this was the system, the process.

I suppose the last dog would be finished whilst waiting for the owners to go.

Obviously we had staff.

The apprentice would be cleaning the bath down.

As soon as the last dog was coming out the bath, that was let it roll.

That was their process.

And then one person would sit and do the notes.

One person would sit and write up the whiteboard for tomorrow's appointments.

And you could walk into our shop every day at like quarter to five, five o' clock and you would see the same thing going on at the same time.

Kim be.

Kim would be cashing up and running the, the report for the machine.

Someone would be type, writing up the whiteboard, some be writing up the notes and you'd hear them saying, right, what's Freddy had today?

And then.

But what was interesting about that was the notes were even systemized and processized, whatever the word is.

Yeah, no, it was like shorthand so that, you know, we had a language within the building that everyone knew.

So if a dog was like 7f short all over, the note would be 7f s a o short all over.

I had to write that down to make sure I got those right.

And that would be the, that would be the note.

So when the next person picked that up, they knew exactly what that dog had had because they understood the, the.

Internal boosted the language of your business.

Absolutely.

And every business has its own internal language.

But it's, it's.

I.

It's taken the time to, to recognize it because I think again, as business owners, you probably use internal, your own internal language, but then maybe you forget to share it with your first team member or your second team member or whatever.

So understand.

I love that whole routine of your day.

That is so.

That is so McDonald's.

How do you open up the restaurant in the morning?

What's the checklist for restaurant opening?

What's the checklist for restaurant closing?

What's the checklist for shift handover?

All of those things so important.

And there used to be a thing called a travel path probably stays.

I'm sure there is a travel path that a manager would have to do every hour.

And they'd literally have to walk outside the restaurant, check for litter, you know, particularly any McDonald's litter, but basically pick up any litter within 100 yards.

It was yards at that point, within 100 yards of the, of the front door and then come in, look at what the customer was going to see in terms of, you know, was a smeared glass on the windows.

Because mostly glass, you know, what were they going to See, when they walked through was.

Were all the.

Was the floor clean, were all the tables clean with a big cues, all of that sort of thing that they would look from a customer's viewpoint what they were going to see.

And I think in a lot of physical businesses, we just go blind.

I mean, I don't know about you.

I had a kitchen once.

When we first walked into the house, I said, oh, my God, that wall's got to go.

That is just.

It was tiling, that is.

Oh, God.

Left the house.

Seven years later, Dials was still up.

Because we just become blind.

We become blind to what the customer sees because we just get used to seeing it every day.

So, you know, from a physical space, you know, your customers do come to you.

Okay, the ones with four legs aren't going to notice.

But the.

But the ones with two legs will notice.

Yeah.

Whether the space is tidy, they will notice.

If, you know, the way you're asking them to walk into the space is a mess, they notice.

They've got time to notice and they do.

Whether it impacts them or not, massively.

That's sort of not the point.

The point is you having those set of standards that there's nothing they're going to look at and go, that's a bit scutty.

It's pride, isn't it?

And like, Emma would do this, like, park the car in the morning and first of all, get out the car and have a look at the building.

You know, do the flowers need watering, pick up the litter.

We did have checklists for.

We had an opening up the shop checklist.

Yeah.

For people like, open.

Open the curtains.

I think the last thing was like, open the curtains, plug the bath in, turn the computers on.

Yeah.

Turn the lights on.

You know, very basic.

Like, yeah.

Cheetah suck eggs.

And the last one was sick.

Hello.

Get the tea ready.

And then we had a prep, like a bathing checklist.

We were above the bath, like, so we'd systemize how to bath a dog, how much shampoo to use, you know, how many times you shampoo it.

All of that, though, is so.

Yeah, then.

And it sounds like, come on, get a life.

You're just shampooing a dog.

Yeah, but these, love, these matter.

You're like, how many.

How many dog shampooing exercises should you be able to get out of a bottle of champagne?

Well, this is it.

Yeah.

Because it's efficiency, it's money.

Yeah.

Emma worked out.

I think we got our shampoo down to 0.07 p per square or per pump.

Or something like that.

Emma is my sort of girl, you know.

But this is, this is the thing, isn't it?

And these, and these are the details.

Like, groomers can go on whole day seminars called Perfect Prep where they taught how to prep.

So it is bloody important to have that checklist above your bath for your member of staff or for yourself.

Because again, it works for staff, but it also works for a business owner.

Because if you're standing in front of that dog, feeling overwhelmed, not knowing where to start, thinking, like, we know that when we get overwhelmed and stressed, our brain starts to close down, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So if you can just look up like you're feeling overwhelmed, you've got a dog in a bath.

You know, what, what do I need to do?

Just look up, there's a bathing checklist.

Start with turn the water on, you know, get the dog.

It just, that's.

I feel it now.

That stress just falls off.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's, that's, you know, a lot of people sort of push back against the idea of systemizing in business and would absolutely be pushing back against, really a bathing checklist.

Come on.

But, but it is that.

It just takes any guesswork out of it.

It takes any.

Oh, I didn't think I would have to do that out of it.

It's like, no, this is the way we do it.

This is the way we bath a dog.

This is the way we set up in the morning.

This is the way we do everything.

This is our way of doing things.

And that's, you know, at McDonald's, nobody talks about systems and processes.

They just Talked about the McDonald's way to do things.

And even when you h, you know, other, other dog groomers, that other dog groomer will have had their way of doing things.

So, so even if they are experienced as dog groomers, no, this is our way.

I, we just want to show you our way of doing things.

And then it just becomes really simple and straightforward.

It's not, it's not stressy.

It's not.

Nobody feels, has to feel defense or anything.

So I appreciate that's how you did it.

We do it slightly differently.

And you know, this, Let me show you.

And, and then everybody's on the same page.

There's no, there are no misunderstandings.

Because it's so clear.

When we, when I was in the police, we used to have people come in from the Metropolitan Police, the Met, and say, they're saying, always.

The saying always was like, oh, we didn't do that in the Met.

And we're like, well, you're not in the Met.

You know, you chose to transfer down to us.

So, like, the key, the key message in your book is the MC Freedom system.

So I think that gives a lot of the listeners a clue that actually systemization.

And we're not just talking about computers and, like, computer systems, but systemization of your business can create freedom.

Yeah, you sort of dive into that a little bit for us.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

It's like if.

If you, if you have all of these set ways of doing things, if you have routines, if you, if you sort of block times to do essential tasks that you maybe hate, but you block the time and you're disciplined in doing it, then it does actually free you to do the stuff you love.

Or ultimately, you know, if you, if your goal is to build a business that it works whether you're there or not, then even better, you're completely free while your business is working exactly as you want it to, delivering great experience for your customers, and you're able to just completely step away and, you know, go and go and do whatever you want or, or maybe set up another salon.

You know, maybe, maybe you go for scale.

But, but it's, it's really.

You have to, you have to stop thinking about, I am.

Oh, God, I've got to systemize my business and just think about those essential routines and start building those essential routines, start building those checklists, you know, systems.

Not.

It's not just software.

For me, the difference is that.

And you will absolutely, 100% get people saying, oh, just use AI to create your systems.

Well, actually, no, if you build your systems with the people who you're working with first or with what you want to happen first, then automate them with AI if you can, 100%.

And that's for me, where, again, a lot of businesses, as they grow, they go, all right, there's this amazing bit of software.

Let's bring it in and then let's fit the way we do things into this bit of software.

No, build the way you do things and then overlay software that's going to make it more efficient or faster or take out steps or allow you to focus on the bits you love.

But don't start with AI.

And, and I get a bit twitchy on LinkedIn, particularly these days when you see so many people are just.

Some guy got in touch with me and said, oh, you know, we're singing off the same hymn sheet.

We're all about, you know, systemization of a business.

I've Got this amazing app that I've created that will produce a process in 12 seconds.

Right, okay.

So went back and said, good luck with that.

Honestly, I really wish you well.

Not the way I view systems at all.

Systems have to be built with the team so that you get their buy in, so that they, they protect our way.

And it's just getting a robot to create things and then tell them to follow it.

Right, okay, you're right.

Yeah.

And any computer system that we've ever had within our business, our dog Green business, we've always, I always call it bastardized the system to our business.

We've never actually used it how it was meant to be used.

We used the basic functions like text message reminders, but we, we always ended up fitting the system around our business, not our business around the system.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And it is, you know, it's a really common mistake and a very expensive mistake often as well, that people will buy into the marketing of a software and then say, oh, right, so we can't do that.

We've got to do this.

Oh, okay.

And then they, they tend to change their way to the system's way and it's, it's, it just didn't work for them in the same way.

Yeah, that could interrupt their values, couldn't it?

You know, if you're doing something because it's part of your values and part of your beliefs and part of like the way that you want to work, and then all of a sudden you're being taken down this funnel by a computer system that you're not.

Yeah.

You won't use it.

And, and, and one that's one that, you know, maybe, you know, you think there was a people being asked for their, for their personal information and you know, it was very often, you know, date of birth and as I've got older, I've become increasingly twitchy about that one.

But, but it is like, why do you need money?

Yeah.

Why?

I.

The dog's date of birth.

To send the dog a birthday card.

Great.

Get it.

My date, birth.

Why do you need to know that?

Yeah, it's not how, in what way is that important to your way of working?

But, well, the system, the system's asking for it.

But why?

Yeah, it's.

Why is it relevant?

Small example, but it's one of those.

That, you know, I said this like some people, some groomers want to know vets details and I, I sort of say, but why?

Well, I want to know who their vet is.

But why?

Because the vet will never talk to you on the phone, they will never.

Without that customer's permission, they'll never give you any details over the phone.

So to set your emergency procedure up, if you have an emergency with that dog, I suggest you just go to your nearest vet that's got an obligation to treat that dog.

You don't need to know what their.

Their.

Who their vet is.

You don't need to know it.

Yeah.

But in my opinion, you know.

Yeah, I was good saying, how is that sledgehammer to crack a nut as well?

Because how often does that happen?

Maybe it happens a lot.

I don't know.

But how often does that happen, that you need to go to a vet?

No.

Very, very little.

So, you know, and like you said, by thinking about the whole.

I've written down customer journey, by thinking about the whole customer journey, you might actually be like, asking for all this information without a real reason why or understanding why.

Like you said, you could be turning that customer off.

Off.

Yeah.

And creating more time and, you know, more time for yourself as well.

Yeah, yeah.

No, absolutely.

I mean, one of the things I know that you're really big on is.

Is charging what you're worth.

And I know we've had this conversation before, and I. I've actually had this same conversation with my dog groomer, who, thanks to you, put my prices up.

So.

But that.

But it.

But it is.

It is.

You know, when I think about it, you know, I have a horse and I.

And I get it clipped and I pay twice.

Pretty much, not quite twice.

I've got to have my horse sedated.

So.

Yeah.

Factoring that in, but.

But I pay a lot more.

And I know it's a bigger animal, but actually there's more intricacies, in my opinion, in grooming a dog than there is grooming.

In grooming a big horse.

Yeah.

And I don't, you know, I. I don't blink at paying my horse clippers prices.

But, you know, when.

When sue, if you're listening, sue went super depressed.

Oh.

But actually, the more authorized.

Yeah.

And, you know, she does a great job.

And, you know, I was gonna say the dog loves her, but as sue knows, I have to carry her.

Yeah.

I had sometimes have to carry her past Sue's house when I go out for a walk.

But, you know, boo.

You.

You guys have so much value and you.

And you do, you know, it's not a.

It's not a job that everybody could do.

I'd.

Crikey.

I. I would savage some poor dogs.

The coats that.

The coats that they get, you know, you have difficult customers, I'm sure to deal with, same as everybody else.

So yeah, absolutely.

Charge what you're worth and have fewer customers if, if that's, you know, if that's the idea.

Yeah, yeah, why not?

I think to wrap it up, obviously.

To wrap it up, go and get a copy of Simple, Logical, Repeatable from like Amazon or Bookshop or is it on Audible?

Did you do it?

Yeah, if you can cope with listening to my voice for nearly five hours.

But to wrap it up, I think, you know, it's really important as a small business owner to you could you can achieve this mcfreedom system within a small business, just reducing the overwhelm.

But you have to have that, that look from the outside in.

What are you doing?

Why are you doing it?

Yeah, is there a better way to do that?

You know, can you systemize how you do that?

But if you do start to start to produce these systems, it can add real confidence to you as the business owner, to your team.

And that confidence then gets passed on to your customers, doesn't it?

Yeah, no, definitely.

And, and even, you know, even if you're working on your own, every single routine task, capture it.

Capture the way you do it, the way you want it done and think through next time you're doing a daily task or a weekly task or a once a month task, really think about, is this the best way to do it?

And then capture it.

Because then when you do take on a team member, you've captured all of your how to videos for each routine task.

Stick them in a Google sheet.

These are my, these are my Monday morning tasks, or these are my everyday tasks, or these are my once a week tasks on a Thursday.

Just capture them.

This is, this is what, you know, somebody needs to learn how to do.

This is the, the video.

I mean, I don't know if your guys use Loom ideas.

I know some people might have heard of it.

Yeah, they're Loom and Descript.

Loom, L O, O M and Descript.

And this is correctly.

There's a number of ways of capturing them I wouldn't suggest you use necessarily.

Well, if you're gonna, you know, I was gonna go technical, but you just don't use all the memory of your phone is what I'm saying.

Luna is really good because it just gives you a link.

It doesn't store the videos anyway.

But no, if you, if you, if you can, as you're working on your own, if you can still think about what all of your routine Tasks are and capture them so that even when you come to do it the same task every quarter or once a year, that, that was always my, that was always my problem.

There was a task that I did every year and every year said, oh my God, I need to bloom and capture this.

I never did, I'm ashamed to say.

And so every year I'd have to Google it.

How do I do this task until I got rid of it anyway.

Yeah, but that's the way to do it.

Google sheet.

Simplest way to capture everything when you're first starting out.

And then you'll always be able to just refer back to it yourself, let alone when you bring in a new team member.

And another vital question to ask, I suppose, is like, do I have to do this task?

Oh, my God, no.

Is there someone else?

Yes.

Yes.

Initially, of course, if you're working on your own, you have to do it.

But as soon as you bring in a team member, you want them to create the how to videos.

If you've got more than one team member, you know, if you have that, that reception customer service person, get them to capture their routine tasks as how to videos.

I mean, how to videos are dead simple.

This is, you know, this video is about how to do this task.

Here's how to do it.

This is why we do it this way.

End of.

That's it.

Two or three minutes.

Never do, never do like a half hour.

How to task, how to video.

Sorry, if it's a half hour task, chop it down into, into small, two, three, maybe four minute videos.

Because it's, it, you know, it's hard to take in a big task in one chunk.

Yeah.

And if one of those tasks is then what I also mean, like delegation, like if one of the task is build a website, there's a website person to do that.

Do your accounts, get an accountant to do it.

You know, delegation outside of your team.

Yeah, yeah.

Don't, don't, don't do stuff that would take you three hours, that it would take somebody else half an hour.

Because that's literally just waste.

It's like the, it's like the brewery guys driving around the countryside delivering beer when they could be doing something really important that grows their business.

Yeah, definitely.

And, and this might pick people's ears up as well if, if they're still not sold on systemization.

You can add value to your business as well.

We sold our business in November 2025 and it was literally, we sold it to a member of staff and it was literally so easy because she.

She'd been with us for six years.

She just knew exactly how the business works and it was a seamless transaction.

And I would probably guess the customers, possibly some of them, didn't even know that we sold it, if it makes sense.

No, no, that's.

That's absolutely amazing.

I love that.

And, and I think that the thing.

The thing about this systemization is that Google sheet that I was talking about, you act.

You're actually building a training system.

So even if somebody who hadn't been working with you bought the business, here's your training system that is so valuable.

Here's how we do everything, everything in our business.

You know, it's like, here is the.

Here is the McDonald's way.

Yeah.

An online manual of how to videos.

Here is our way of running our.

Running our salon.

It's a massive selling point.

A training system with everybody bought into how we do things is huge as a selling point.

Simple, logical, repeatable, brilliant.

You need to show them the book, just in case there's two others.

There it is, look.

Simple, repeatable, repeatable winged burger, which I also trademarked.

Just as they must ask me to get rid of that.

It's been fantastic to catch up with you and we could probably talk for a few more hours, but maybe there's.

Maybe there's a part two and a part three in there somewhere, but go.

Go and go and buy or go and download this, the book.

Simple, logical, repeatable.

Marianne page.

Learn the McDonald Freedom System and start thinking about how you can implement that into your.

Your business.

Whether you're one person, solo groomer, working from home, or having multiple salons, there's.

There's something in there for absolutely everyone, isn't there?

And.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

And to be honest, Bill, if you ever wanted to do a Q and A with people coming in and asking questions, I'd be.

I'd be more than happy to.

Happy to do that.

Well, yeah, I think.

I think there's.

There's going to be.

I'll talk to you afterwards about coming onto our program and doing some coaching, perhaps.

All right.

Okay, great.

Even better.

Even better.

But thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Oh, no, absolutely amazing.

Lovely talking to you as always, Bill.

We'll catch up soon, kids.

Bye.

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Sol.