Slow Down to Speed Up

We all slowed down…to speed up

I spent the day with about a dozen SynkedUP Crew members in a regional meetup in Nashville yesterday – all who were able to slow down for a day.

It was awesome.

There’s something refreshing about removing yourself from the daily grind, shutting off your notifications, and spending time with peers.

It helps shift your focus from the urgent to the important. It’s helpful to discuss challenges and approaches with peers. It’s inspiring to see how others are leveling up their operation and team and getting ideas to take home.

Sometimes you just have to slow down to speed up.

What’s that oxymoron supposed to mean?

How long?

Sometimes you just need to stop for ten minutes, and research whether the way you’re doing a task is the best way, before resuming the “busyness”.

For example: Hunter Hutchinson from Kingston Springs TN, stopped for ten minutes, we did a quick review of how he’s using templates to build estimates and discovered that he wasn’t using production rates. We did some quick work to build out production rates, and now he can build out that same estimate in far less time. Plus now his office admin could help him build quotes because we took the magic formulas in his head and translated them into production rates in the software.

He was able to slow down down for 10 min, adjusted his process, and will now save hours upon hours each month in estimating.

Slow down to speed up.

In fact, he wasn’t the only one. There were a number of folks, some of whom have been using SynkedUP for years, that made the same discovery.

I know it was hard for them to step away for the day. Each one of them had a million reasons to not come. Their teams needed them. If notifications had been turned on, their phones would have been pinging all day.

But…. the 1 day these incredible hard-working folks took away from their businesses will return back to them ten-fold in the days and months to come.

What we learn when we slow down

We were also able to slow down and build automations for each one that was there yesterday, to allow their customers to book consultations with them directly on their website, and automatically flow that info directly into their SynkedUP account. Now they will speed up by not having to manually book those consultations and manually type all that info into their SynkedUP account. Saving precious minutes each time.

Sometimes you already HAVE the right tool, resource, process, etc. You just need to stop for a hot minute and evaluate whether you’re using it in the best way.

Sometimes it’s an education or knowledge thing. Sometimes it’s a discipline thing. Meaning sometimes you just didn’t know that you could do it a better way. And sometimes you already know, knowing is not the problem. But you lack the discipline to do the thing you already know you need to do. And if you only had the discipline to do it, that problem or time/energy suck in your life would not be nearly as bad.

If you’d stop and take the 2 minutes to do what you should be doing, it’d save you a tremendous amount of time/energy later.

For example

Say it takes 30 seconds to clock in and out of a job on your timekeeping app. But man it’s a pain to discipline yourself to take that 30 seconds each time.

So you don’t do it, or don’t do it consistently. You save that 30 seconds each day.

Later you realize you have a problem. Cash flow is tight. You are working hard but don’t have the profits to show for your hard work. You know you have some jobs that are taking too long, and it’s killing you on payroll costs for these labor overruns, and delaying kicking off the next job, and in turn, delaying the cash flow for that job.

The problem is, you don’t know WHERE you’re running over on these labor costs. Why? What types of work are causing this?

So you spend a bunch of time stressing over this problem, trying to decide what to change. At best, you’re left guessing at what changes you need to make. But you WERE saving that 30 seconds on each clock in and out… 😅.

Contrast that to the team that had been taking that 30 seconds to clock in and out.

Same problem. Working hard, cash flow is tight, labor overruns, delaying the next job.

But this team can take a few quick minutes and discover EXACTLY where the labor overruns are, and begin to deduce the “why”.

In a few quick moments, they can discover that “Hey! Every time we do a curved, double-sided seating wall, it’s taking us 30-50% longer to complete than we had estimated.”

And bingo, adjust estimating practices, problem solved.

That’s an example of how discipline in investing the seconds, can save you hours/days and stress on the tail end.

What’s an example of how you’ve “slowed down to speed up” recently? Hit reply and let me know!

Weston Zimmerman

SynkedUP co-founder & CEO

P.S. If you’re like “Man! I need these time-saving examples in my life!”, book a demo of SynkedUP here.