By Matt Ketterman

Landscaping and gardening have become a recent hobby of mine. It is so gratifying to look back and see the fruits of your labor. From potting plants to mulching, it is amazing how nice you can make your property look. The only thing that I despise about gardening is those pesky weeds. It seems that by the time you get to the end of the flower beds, the place you started has weeds starting to grow. The key to delaying the weeding process is to get to the root of the weed.

Business is much the same. We can take a deep dive to solve issues and truly fix them or we can brush over them; like a weed that is not pulled by the root, those issues quickly resurface. Below are some examples of how we can dig from the roots in business.

Remnants. If your business does any kind of volume, you end up with remnants. I’m not talking about roll balances that the warehouse staff mismanaged, I am talking about the flooring that is paid for that comes back from jobs. Do you throw them in the dumpster? To keep remnants from getting out of control, we have a policy that the roll must be measured and back rolled with the fibers facing out. We put a core in the roll so that they don’t crush. We then wrap the roll with tape and label the size. Our warehouse staff can sell the remnants for whatever the market bears and keep 50%. You would be amazed at how many lunches have been funded by remnants!

Employee Reviews. Let’s face it: no matter what side of the table you sit on, employee reviews are a drag. If you are the reviewer, you must spend hours preparing for them. If you are the reviewee, you spend hours worrying about them. The way I get to the root of employee reviews is to do quarterly one-to-ones with employees. I find them a lot more productive and there is much better engagement. Some of our best practices have resulted from feedbacks in these one-on-one discussions.

Poor Performing Employees. This one is precisely what I mean when I say, get to the root. Once you have exhausted some effort and an employee is consistently performing to subpar standards, rip off the Band-Aid. It will serve you and your staff well to remove the weed from the garden. The only place subpar is good is in golf.

Installation Crews. How can you “weed out” crews when there is a labor shortage? We have found the solution to be a minor league/major league program. When crews first start, they are trained on rental homes, apartments, and smaller jobs that we can afford to make mistakes on. Of course, we want all jobs to go well. We feel like we can learn from our mistakes and fix errors much easier on a $500 apartment job than on a $5,000 personal home job. Our customers understand the labor shortage and our plan to combat it. Once a crew earns the right, they are promoted to the major leagues, where they make more income and we make better margins. If they fail in the minor leagues, we gladly recommend them to our competition. Joking. Sort of.

Marketing That Does Not Work. With most marketing and advertising, you usually give it a try and hope that it works. Some promotions work better than others. After some patience and investment, this is an area you must pull the weeds by the roots. If it is not working, the opportunity cost of those marketing dollars must be allocated elsewhere. We have a referral program that no advertiser will even try to compete with when I explain it them. They have pretty much quit trying. The weeds have been pulled in that flowerbed.

As always, feel free to email your comments, ideas and suggestions to me at mketterman@gotyoufloored.com.

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Matt Ketterman opened for business out of his 1998 Honda Accord and has since created millions of dollars in net income. He operates a highly successful flooring company in in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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