Manufacturing eCommerce Success – with Dave Crysler

Damon Pistulka  00:04

All right, everyone, it’s Friday and you know what that means? It’s time for manufacturing ecommerce success. I am one of your co host, David Pistulka. That pretty guy right over there as Curt Anderson, co hosts ready to go today today we’re gonna be talking about two with Dave Chrysler about automate delegate or eliminate things to drastically improve your business.

Curt Anderson  00:30

Kurt take it away. Tonight. First off, let’s Dan bigger Mr. Bigger than life. How about Go Blue? Like go blue national champions. Right. And we brought on a guy from Michigan just just for you, Dan bigger. So how’s that? So, all right, man, happy Friday, David Pustaka. From exit your way. Curt Anderson from b2b Tell Man What an honor what a privilege to be here with the one the only Dave Chrysler David, how are you brother? I’m

Dave Crysler  01:01

great, man. I don’t know if I’m gonna live up to all this hype. I mean, my gosh, I might not even be able to get out of the office door after this. After this live show today. Well, you

Curt Anderson  01:11

know what, you know, between your wife gave me a buzz and she’s like, you know, Hey, kid, can you you know, prop them up a little bit. I’m like, Are you kidding me? I’m like, I like you’re even either ask me or prop up Dave Chrysler. Hey, Diane buyers in the house. She’s coming to Twitter man. She’s on XL Zed. So Dave. Oh, yeah. So Dave Crysler. We’re streaming live on LinkedIn and Twitter today. Damien’s streaming all over the place. Guys. Man, sit back and enjoy this one because I’m telling you, Dave, you can pull your ears and I don’t care how big your head gets. Dude yet yet. You’ve completely changed my life. Man changed my processes. I consider you my accountability coach. I know if it’s not every day. I’m like, Alright, how would what would Dave tell me to do? How would Dave handle this? Now, Damon, Dave Chrysler is a repeat offender. Like I like my new friends are like he needs to be a better judge of character. But he’s a repeat offender. We did not ask this question. The last time Dave was on the show. So David, are you sitting down? Are you ready for this one?

Dave Crysler  02:09

Boy, hit me with it.

Curt Anderson  02:11

i Okay. So Andy’s in the house here. Happy Friday to you MD Whitney Houston.

Dave Crysler  02:18

And I

Curt Anderson  02:19

was in person with Whitney Whitney. I like being a person with you better than here virtually. But so Hey, sending lots of love to our friend Whitney. Dave, Chrysler question for you of the day. As you were a little guy growing up. Okay. Take us back. What was that five or 10 years

Dave Crysler  02:34

ago? Yeah, only five or 10 years ago? Made maybe 12? When

Curt Anderson  02:39

you were a little guy growing up? Who was your hero? Who was your heroes? A little guy grown up?

Damon Pistulka  02:46

Wow. That’s,

Dave Crysler  02:47

that’s a great question. You know, and I’m sure that you get a lot of similar answers. I might throw you guys for a loop with this one a little bit. I honestly, I would say that the biggest tear I had, especially when I was a little kid. was my mom. Nice. And the reason why is because, you know, I’ve shared a bit of this story before, right? Like, I grew up in manufacturing a couple of different manufacturing businesses. So you know, when I was little guy, my dad got pretty sick and had some pretty major health stuff going on. And my mom was the one that ultimately stepped into the one business and kind of figured stuff out. Right, like, like, so many, so many business owners and leaders do. And it was, you know, like, as young as I was, I can still kind of remember those moments. And as that continued to go on in life, there were there were other moments where she continued to kind of just dive in headfirst and show her strength and really lead. And, you know, it was the start of all of that, that that I kind of hang my hat on, you know, the work ethic, the the kind of grinding, the constant learning, the just jumping in and figuring it out making mistakes based on limited information and just trying to move forward constantly. You know, and she’s always done that. So I really, you know, I’m really grateful for having grown up in that and having saw that firsthand, not just because the entrepreneurship piece of it, but you know, really, from a character building standpoint. So well,

Curt Anderson  04:25

I absolutely love that. So David, Mom and Dad entrepreneurs, and I know right on your LinkedIn profile you have you know, spending weekends at the shop, right? Yeah. What’s what’s mom and dad’s name, please. Sharon, Dennis, Sherry and Dennis, talk a little bit, you know, so you dug in a little bit about mom and rolling up her sleeves like how do you feel that that impacted you now as a parent as an adult as an entrepreneur? Did that influence mean to you now that you’re older maybe reflect it and understand it respected a lot more than maybe did his little guy Yeah,

Dave Crysler  04:56

I mean, it’s, you know, again, it’s it’s really interesting because I feel like growing up in that environment, it’s all the things I did, it really shaped my entire life. You know, I mean, like, and not to be cliche about it, but, you know, growing up in that environment when I, after high school, and as I was going to college, I went to work for my parents, you know, that was like my first kind of real job, if you will. And I was doing a lot of like, I didn’t know it at the time, right. But I was like, doing a lot of optimization and kind of system building, I had no idea what I was doing. But you know, looking back, I was like, Oh, well, that was the first time I had to deal with that. And, you know, what was interesting, though, for me was like, you see that firsthand, you see, the challenges of growing something from nothing, and all of this stuff, right? Like how focused you have to be at work and how involved you get and, and really, that kind of working in versus working on your business. And, you know, I looked at that, and when they sold that business that I was working at, I stayed there for a period of time, but ultimately left and kind of went to seek working for a big company, because I kind of like had the SOP process, like, alright, well, I see what this is, like, I obviously, they’ve got things kind of figured out, because how else you get to be so big, you know, and, you know, so that was kind of that part of the journey and, and to kind of wrap up all of that, right? Like, as I left that, because I got married, were expecting our daughter, that was one of the things I thought about, you know, was traveling quite a bit we were we were living in an area that we, you know, not necessarily kind of saw ourselves in forever. And, you know, I had this thought process back to like, when I was growing up and said, You know, I really want to be available and to do all the things and to, you know, take an afternoon off and go to lunch randomly, or whatever the case was, right, go to a concert, all of those types of things. And this, for me was kind of the pathway to be able to do that. So I knew I wanted to be back in an entrepreneurial spot. So, you know, it’s really, like I said, not to be cliche, but it’s really shaped my entire life, kind of the entire trajectory, go into work for really big company, I’m Ultra thankful for all of those opportunities and the things that I learned there. I would never tell you that while I was navigating any of those challenges, but looking back, I can certainly say that I’m, I’m beyond grateful for all of that. And it again, it is what paved the way for me to do the things I love to do today, because it really unlocked the passion for looking at problems through a new lens, bringing people together and just starting to unpack all of the opportunities around that. So yeah.

Damon Pistulka  07:43

Okay, that’s awesome, man. I can’t I can’t not show this comment, Dave because I think you’re gonna you’re gonna enjoy this just as much from Dan bigger. We have to Dan. Dan, we have to pick a date.

Curt Anderson  07:58

You got. You got to shave your head and it’s national guy. Hey, you know what? I’m going back. How about Whitney, dude? Like, you got me ready? Yeah, it was like, like, I there might be like a little tear right here, Damon. So I have

Dave Crysler  08:13

something to add to that, too. Dan, did you know that you can submit days into the National Day registry? So you can take a forward step into creating this actual day so we can all celebrate?

Damon Pistulka  08:28

That will be that will be Hey, something we should do? My

Curt Anderson  08:32

mom. My mom thinks you My mom says you know so he so we’ve got John Buck lino isn’t. So MD says Happy Friday. And so again, guys, keep the comments. Here today. Happy Friday to everybody. So yeah, what other comments we got here, Damon? So let’s do this guy. Speak in the comments. If you’re not familiar with Dave Crysler, or we strongly encourage you, we invite you we welcome you connect with Dave on LinkedIn. You’ll thank us later, Man, this guy is a powerhouse. I’m telling you firsthand. He’s completely changed my thought process. Like it’s almost embarrassing of like, I took 50 some years. So Dave, thank you for the changes that you helped me but Mmm. And so we’re going to talk about man, you had some great lines here. The passion for viewing problems through a new lens skate. We just talked about mom and dad being your heroes. Let’s do a deep dive man. Let’s let’s let’s go right there. How do you help folks with this operational excellence? How do you hope that we’re here talking, automate, delegate and eliminate your way to success. Like let that sink in for a second everybody let that sink in. Please drop your questions in the chat box because we have the efficiency expert here. Dave, let’s let’s go there. How did you come up with this automate delegate eliminate let’s let’s go there. Yeah,

Dave Crysler  09:49

I mean, you know, it’s really just a simplified framework. You know, a lot of the folks that that I talked to, whether it be you know, an ops leader or a business owner, you You get so bogged down in the day to day and it’s easy to say like, Hey, I know I have all these priorities. I know I have all these initiatives, I know I have all of you know, fill in the blank. And the reality is you, you get to the office and the first fire pops up and see you grab your extinguisher and then the next fire pops up, and you go run over there. And before you know it, you miss lunch, and it’s three o’clock, and you sit down and you’re like, ah, what happened today? You know, like, Why do I feel like this? Why do I feel so beat up? And, you know, so for me is really just a process of simplification. You know, you got to understand where are you spending your time? And what are those types of things that are really bogging you down, right? And then you can start to prioritize and look for ways to you know, again, my favorite is eliminate, right, because so often, we’re doing things with without, you know, we do them because we’ve always done them. But but there’s no, you know, kind of recourse if we stop, like, I give you guys a great story. So I was I was working with this absolute or who, and if you guys have ever seen the movie Office Space, you’d like anybody that seen this movie will appreciate this. Right? Right. Yeah. So she starts telling me about her TPS reports, right? And I go, I just thought, you know, just don’t send them this, don’t send them once and see if anybody asks, yep, and if you do that for like, a week, and nobody asks you, that is an eliminate bucket, okay? Because nobody’s even looking at these things. But yet, somewhere along the way, somebody said that we needed to do this, right. And so there’s all kinds of opportunities. Like, if we’re talking about, you know, from a leadership perspective, there’s all kinds of opportunities to do that. But you can expand on that, right? Like, you can do that for your team, you could do it for a particular work center, you could do it for a work cell, you could do it for a department, you could do it for, you know, across the organization. So yeah, it for me, it’s just a really simplified framework and kind of get you in the right mindset of, you know, how can I start taking some of the things that I’m doing from a day to day task perspective, and, you know, start to find some efficiency within that. And then, you know, it just continues to compound and snowball, you know, we can talk about, you know, productivity, you know, entirety, right, like, efficiency versus utilization utilization, we could bring this into product quality and talk about, you know, those processes, and how does that, you know, kind of flow from this same thought process? Right, I would almost guarantee that most manufacturers today are doing some sort of inspection process, sampling process, something that is probably a time waster from the standpoint is not delivering any kind of actual return on investment. And it’s because we’ve not dug into the details of what the root causes are of the defects that we’ve created to then understand, like, How did this even start, you know, and like, why are we looking at this, we should be looking over here. It’s, again, you can apply this so narrowly, or broadly, that it becomes just a really effective tool.

13:17

Yeah. And

Damon Pistulka  13:18

I just gotta say this, because I didn’t realize it. But polar knights, thank you for this comment. I didn’t realize that if you look at Kurt, and then you look at me, and then you look at De evolution of beard growth. It’s so awesome. Just to get see that stuff. Great. Thanks for sharing that. Raise

Curt Anderson  13:37

a guy knows. He says it’s a before and after of like the hair growth for men. You start here, you go to Daymond. And then you go to Dave, right. Yeah, exactly.

Damon Pistulka  13:47

We got Sarah, that she talked to you yesterday, Dave. And she was absolutely inspired. That’s awesome. Sarah for dropping that. And then and Diane dropped it again to it’s in understanding priority and understanding and priorities, eliminate and streamline this is just the eliminate step is so critical. Because just like you said, if you’re just doing it, doing it doing it, and you really sometimes it’s just best to stop and see if anyone says anything.

Dave Crysler  14:18

Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s the you know, you can depending on who you want to cite, right, but it’s kind of the number one reason that I such a huge proponent and kind of against like, why are we looking at a new tech solution, right? Like, why aren’t we focused on optimizing the process and optimizing the process means looking for things that we can potentially eliminate, looking for things that we can potentially optimize slash automate, right? And, and in most cases, you’ll need a piece of tech to automate. But I kind of I lean more towards that eliminate piece because too often we’re doing tasks within that process flow that we don’t even need to do you know, It’s an additional touch. And so but when we you know, but when we focus on that tool or the tack first, then it’s just kind of automatic that well, this is what we’ve always done. So of course, we’re going to automate that piece of it too, versus saying, Well, what can Why don’t we have to do more? You know, and, and more importantly, why right? But I mean, that’s, that’s kind of the root of all of that. So,

Curt Anderson  15:24

let’s Alright, so let’s get to grab a couple more comments here. Damon. So we’ve got so John says, I wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face. And he says, Hey, I might have to watch office space, today might be a good day for a movie. And Dan says, optimize and maximize. So Dave, let’s go here. So we’re talking about eliminating what have you just don’t do the TPS reports. And I absolutely love like, what like, look in the mirror, and this one, right, the defects that we created the defects that like, you know, so we bought that person, that person, we’re gonna blame somebody else, but like, you know, when you look at the mirror, like the defects that we see, you’re talking about, like, what can we eliminate? And as a company, you know, it’s easier, you know, like, Hey, we should do this to this as individuals. Let’s talk about automate. Okay. That’s what I feel like you’ve really helped me with is on automate side. Yeah, that’s there for a minute. What are some tips strategies? We’ve got Dan John McLean. Oh, Dan, Dan, buyer, Whitney Sara’s in a house here. And again, guys, you have questions, man, this is a great way to connect with Dave on LinkedIn. But Dave, let’s talk a little bit about automation. For us. solopreneurs, solo marketers, what are some automation tips that you feel are really helpful to move the needle? Yeah,

Dave Crysler  16:34

I mean, there’s so many right like that. It is honestly the coolest part of the technological advances, you know, that have come to be right. So a couple of my favorites, right, you can start on what I would consider the lowest level in terms of that automation piece with, you know, Zapier or Zapier, depending on on how you like to fall on, on that model. Exactly. You know, that’s a great one right to get you started there. They’re kind of latest update gives you a really cool visualization tool in terms of like, how do you integrate some of the, you know, some of the siloed other technologies that we tend to have within our business? You know, make.com is my favorite, when it comes to kind of that automation piece, especially when you want to start to get a bit more deep into integrations, you know, comparatively speaking, you can do a lot more with, you know, make than you can with Zapier, and so that’s another great tool. But there’s other things, right, like, you can tell you can you can automate social media posting, and those types of things. That’s a form of automation. You know, again, I’m not, to me, the tool doesn’t matter, right? Like, it’s literally it’s like, hey, I need a hammer. All right, you know, will doesn’t matter what the brand is, well, you know, maybe, right, like, maybe you can talk about the features and benefits of one over the other, you can talk about the quality of one over the other, but at the end of the day, it’s it’s still going to help you, you know, pound a nail. And so, you know, technology and tools, for me are the same. The big key there, again, is let’s look at the process. And what are we trying to do with that process? Right? How do we automate the process? And how do we eliminate the kind of inherent waste and more errors within that process, that is what the technology is, therefore, okay. So that’s why it is so imperative that we understand, these are the things I need done. This is the order I need done. And we don’t add in stuff that is kind of, you know, non value add or non additive to the result that we’re ultimately seeking. That is how you identify the appropriate tool to use that is how you ultimately implement in the most streamlined fashion. And that is how you almost guarantee, you know, successful integration and adoption, right? Like, that’s the thing. Yeah. Well,

Curt Anderson  19:12

Dan, bigger here just says Dave Chrysler, I just threw up in my mouth. Never do things that we don’t hit that line. This is how we’ve always done it. One of the death lines of our businesses, and then Dan follows up and says, tech is not capital and OT, always, Lucien, I’ll

Dave Crysler  19:31

give you a personal example of tech is not always the solution. Okay. I love technology. I have always loved technology. I’ve always, you know, kind of pushed and figured out ways to integrate technology, you know, taught myself how to code I’ve written I’ve done custom software development, custom integration, all kinds of stuff. I love technology. All right, but I’m going to tell you, it can also be a tremendous crutch for all of us. And when you don’t have the process and the people coming together to identify right? What those tasks are that we need to do. And we, we just simply rely on the tech can be really easy to overlook simple things and to hold ourselves accountable. So the one perfect example of this would be most everybody should if they don’t, but most everybody, whether you’re a solopreneur, up through enterprise has a CRM, right? It’s how we have to maintain a relationships. It’s how we continue sales conversations, prospecting, all the things. One of the things that CRMs are not great at are kind of the accountability piece of what’s the repetition. How many touch points Am I making on any given day, week, month, quarter, right? This deal old school checklist, right? Pen and paper? Simple, right? We don’t need to build out a complex technology, we don’t need to identify something that we can live in a digital world to check a box that says, I did this today. I did that today. Right? So there’s something tactile about keeping things manual and not in technology that reinforces it’s been proven research tells us that it is important to still write and to you know, be able to have some sort of tactile response in there. So, you know, there’s opportunities abound for all of these types of things. And again, that’s that’s coming from, you know, a guy that loves technology.

Curt Anderson  21:37

So, we got a comment here. And this, Dan says that Ron Higgs is here. I don’t know if this is Ron’s comment. But considering the Eisenhower matrix with the urgent and important categories, I found the most important things considered urgent, are self inflicted wounds.

Damon Pistulka  21:53

Yeah. How about Yeah.

Curt Anderson  21:55

How about that for a little eye opener, right?

Damon Pistulka  21:57

Yeah, yeah,

Curt Anderson  21:58

well, go ahead, do it

Damon Pistulka  22:00

well, and you know, there’s some of these you talk about the CRMs, right. And it makes it really easy to spray and pray a gazillion emails, text messages, whatever. But it doesn’t mean that you’re really doing what you should be doing when you when you automate some of these things. And some of this really is human needs to be human. Right. And

Dave Crysler  22:19

busy versus productive argument, you know, 100%, busy

Curt Anderson  22:24

versus productive. Let’s go there. And hey, guys, we’ve got some questions. Dave, let’s, let’s hit options. I love that. So you know what, Damon, what we’d love to talk about is like, how do you eliminate those time wasters? Those profit killers? And you know, man, I have so long I have so far to go on this how you’ve got to be militant with your time. Yeah, that’s the only thing we have is time. Danziger says, Dave Crysler, sir, how can I get my quote, best friend, boss, and aka my wife, to get organized so she can get out? Get an order out faster? I’ve been working on this process for 20 years. Dave Christ, you’re curious minds want to know, what does the experts say to that answer?

Dave Crysler  23:07

Tread delicately.

Curt Anderson  23:12

So I know, we’re no longer operational excellence consultants here. I’m Dr. David, we’re not marriage counselors, right.

Dave Crysler  23:22

I mean, you know, what’s interesting about that, I’ll give like the real world case study of that, right? Like, when I go into a business, one of the best kind of starting points is the front end of the business, because traditionally speaking, the front end from kind of client contact to getting the order to the shop, right. So that’s what I’m calling the front end of the business. Typically, that series of processes is just burdened with inefficiency. And generally, it has to do with both the kind of technology that’s been implemented, because it’s been implemented from a technology standpoint, and not from a people in process standpoint. And if you look at that flow, there are just inherent delays in it. Well, I had to send a separate series of questions back to the client to understand all of the specifications. Well, how can we build a process to collect all of that on the front end? How can we preemptively solve for that issue that we’ve identified time and time again, you know, if it’s if it has something to do with receivables or down payment, or you know, anything like that, if it has to do with, you know, lead times for suppliers, all of those are pieces and opportunities to take a look at document what the processes are, prioritize what our ideas are in terms of trying to solve for that, right? That could be eliminate that could be automate that could be, you know, we need to be able to capture additional information. So let’s do that. And then we start to roll those changes out and then we can You know, measure and monitor and then we get into that cycle again, you know?

Curt Anderson  25:04

Right. Absolutely. Okay, so Alright guys, we’re here at Dave Chrysler again, I think we’re losing track of time. We’re like coming to the top of the hour. Just join us please connect with Dave on LinkedIn and just he puts out just wonderful content, great tips and I love what you do you do like a fun like a flair. You take you know, kind of like a dry topic and you really add a lot of spice to it. Got some comments here from Diane buyer, pen and paper say what and then Dan says, What if I can’t read my own writing? I should have been a doctor. Hey, we’re sending love we get we’re getting some love here today. So we appreciate you. Ryan dances rantings, you’re probably right. That is for our four kids. We get Audrey is saying great idea video. Happy to watch it. Guys keep the comments coming. Hey, Diane says Dan, marriage counseling. Is that true? Is that true? Alright, Dan, thank you for helping Dan. You’ve got our back. We appreciate that so much. Let’s go here, Dave. Okay, so you know what, there was a question back here. I think Sara dropped a question Damon, I don’t if you saw that one. Dave cray. Sir, can you share a real life example of elimination in your operation? Damon thing? I want you to think about one, I’ve got one that I think about? Dave, anything that you want to chime in for Sarah here? Yeah.

Dave Crysler  26:21

I got to think of a good real life scenario. I mean, if we’re going to if we’re going to utilize kind of a manufacturing scenario or story, you know, I’ll go back to kind of like my, my quality example a bit of that, right. So so often, we kind of get situated into that routine again, because, you know, typically, it’s the it’s the typical knowledge transfer, that happens from a training and process standpoint, right? So we kind of just get in this rhythm of doing the same thing over and over again, without ever asking, why are we doing this? You know, is this driving a result? You know, is it truly preventative? And how do we know? How do we know that this is truly preventative? So I guess that would really be my example. You know, when we’re looking at something like a quality process, and let’s just say it’s on a, it’s on one piece of equipment, and we’re talking about some sort of interval inspection, you know, how did we come to understand that that’s the interval? How are we ensuring that, you know, we’ve collected the appropriate sample for that? I’ll take it one step further, how are we ensuring that we are measuring whatever that that collected sample becomes? You know, because oftentimes, there’s variation within those collected samples. But if we’ve never gone to that next layer to understand, you know, how are we testing for that? And how are we ensuring for that? You know, you could be at as much if not more risk. So I went a bit in a different direction than, like, kind of straight up eliminating things. But it’s all the same concept, right? All the same concept, you could take that and apply that to a, like a setup on a piece of equipment, you know, why are we doing this versus that? And, you know, do we have the ability to eliminate this versus that? What’s the result of that? How do we measure that? What’s the, you know, ultimate impact on value for the customer for making that type of decision? Well,

Curt Anderson  28:27

absolutely love it. Damon, what are your anything friend of mine? on your end? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  28:31

yeah, we just, we just helped the client do this. And it’s a little extreme, but I think it’s it. We eliminated all meetings. In a company of over 50 people, we just said, Listen, we have zero meetings, we’re going to start over, we know we’re going to need some, but every one of them was cancelled. Until further notice. That’s awesome. You need to have one, let’s talk about it and get it scheduled and make sure that we have an agenda. We know what this meeting is there to accomplish to accomplish. And we’re, we’re taking notes and it’s published so everyone can see the results of the meeting. Because we actually were analyzing the time spent in meetings, and across a 60 person organization, it was about 35% of their day. Wow. Yeah. Elimination is powerful in this think about this, right? You have, you do not have to work any faster. Right? If you eliminate stuff, you just are working on more of the right stuff during the day.

Dave Crysler  29:36

I’ll give you one more to do for a next step for that Damon nice, challenge them to eliminate internal email. I’m serious. If you challenge them to take those internal communications and either either make them you know a Text a pop in meeting right in, in prompt to meeting to drive a result, right. But that’s that’s what the basis of it is because the next immediate thing that will happen, I would almost guarantee it is that you’ll see two things, the amount of inner kind of internal email pickup and the amount of CCS pickup because everybody wants to see why a right and then you will see a slide back to those meeting cadence just kind of start to pop up. So I would randomly you know, I would encourage them to start monitoring that as you know, one of the tricks and see how much of that you can eliminate because we all get a lot of that. Oh, yeah. So yeah. All right,

Curt Anderson  30:48

man, that was juicy. How about Whitney Houston on this one? No, no, that’s and so you know, we’re putting this video today. We’re putting this out on podcast I just wanted, so I want people on podcast to catch this comment. Yeah, he says no agenda, no attender and Dan bigger says, Hey, that doesn’t cost a fortune. In back your comment. If you can give me an idea as to how we can cut it. That might be a one on one for Dan, you need to get on a call with Dave and Amos versus Curt Anderson did my mom call this person and say to put that in there, Damon? I don’t know about that. But let’s, let’s go here. We’re talking about automate, delegate or eliminate I just want to share a little testimony. I’ve been given so much love to Dave and I know like, you know, his, you know, his wife called me. We talked about that earlier. But I Dave, you came on the show a while ago, I’m not sure how long ago was in the title The show was working hard to get lazy. I remember that. Remember that been working hard to get lazy and was just kind of playing Words like how can we get lazy be as efficient as humanly possible? Let me share with you what they did for me. Do I’m not exaggerating, I’ve saved hours. It’s I almost feel guilty of how much time like you’ve freed up for me. So automate, Damon, you and I are using a software I know we’re back and forth on a software thing. But we’re using a software go high level, go high level. Now when we interrupt when we track our guests for the show, I send out a link person sends up a link, we’ve got a whole automation set up thanks to you, thanks for your inspiration. It has cut my time down, literally. hours, hours. I’m now using my account, you know, like everybody, if you’re not using Calendly or whatever account you know, you’re scheduling, like, Dave really encouraged me to get that going. I’ve got that down efficient. And so like there’s a lot of things on a delegate side, Damon, you know, Teresa on my team. So God bless you. I love you. She’s doing like she makes this show happen behind the scenes, she puts out all of our content. She’s just an absolute relentless Rockstar. So Dave, again, like you’ve really spearheaded been my accountability coach helping me to get more efficient with these processes in daycare, I love you. I can’t you know, so if you guys you know, like, think about as a solopreneur solo marketer, challenge yourself and I’m gonna share this, I’m gonna stop talking. Get a mentor, get a coach, get on a call with Dave Kreisler. Follow Dave on LinkedIn, follow his posts on a daily basis, he puts out just amazing, ridiculous content to help you just such a go giver. So please connect with Dave. Dave, I’m gonna go here and change little gears on your on your LinkedIn profile you how you have I helped clients overcome. I can’t read my own writing. I feel like damn bigger, what’s on things that are holding them back? Okay, you talked about number one, drive growth, improve your process, get your operational excellence snapshot. If you don’t mind, I’d love to dig into each of those three quickly. We won’t know I don’t want to keep you all day. But we talked about driving growth, improving your process to improve profitability, man, let’s make sure we keep that word in there. And number three, get your operational excellence snapshot. Let’s start with number one. How do you help folks drive growth?

Dave Crysler  33:58

Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to kind of three key areas, you know, productivity, generally inventory and quality. So taking a look at your operation through those lenses. And, you know, I know we’re focused on manufacturing, but this applies outside of that as well. Right? So a lot of times people they are I’m not creating a product, I don’t have quality. Well, you want to ensure you have a consistent client experience OSHA, you want to ensure that your team is taken care of and understands what their tasks and responsibilities are, don’t ya? So I would argue that you definitely have a quality you know, department in your sphere, regardless of the business. And the same thing for inventory. You know, people don’t think of inventory from that most people would think of inventory in the traditional sense, manufacture raw material finished goods, right? But we’re all buying stuff all day long, right? So it’s just a matter of your definition. I would argue that every business This has something in one of those three categories. And that for me is really kind of the roadmap. That’s the lens. Those are the three starting points. And from there, we kind of dig into that next layer down. Well,

Curt Anderson  35:12

I love it. And David, let’s grab a few more comments here that man, thank you for the chatbox. Is that inspired? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  35:17

Vox is on fire. Just thanks so much, everybody. We love it. Love it. From Diane. Yeah. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  35:25

Once policy absolutely love that. Can we change the procedures of just touching at once. Ron Higgs, apparently this is a rad happy man happy Friday to run it exists in the house. One easy measure is the ask the question, what’s going to be different? At the end of the meeting? What a great question that is everybody jot that one down what’s going to be different at this meeting. And Whitney says that was Dan bigger as my former employer never had an agenda. And the leaders would often go on tangents talk about a time suck. And she says Ron Higgs, I love that. So again, guys, keep those comments coming. Keep the questions coming for Dave. Alright, so we covered keep it rollin. Dave, what other? What other comments do you want to have for your process here?

Dave Crysler  36:06

Yeah. Well, one of the other things that, you know, that you mentioned, in terms of, you know, things that people can look out for and do. One of the things I think I hear universally from the folks that I talked to is, you know, Dave, we recognize we have XYZ problem, but we just don’t know where to start. And, you know, it kind of if I had a nickel for every time I heard that phrase, and it honestly, it always makes me laugh, because I always give the same answer, right? What do you mean, you don’t know where to start? Like, we started the beginning, what’s so hard about that? Right, like, but the real challenge in that is, you know, it’s, it’s simple, but it’s not easy. And it’s not easy, because we we look at things and you know, have a really hard time understanding how everything is interconnected? And exactly what are the bounds of the things that I’m, you know, trying to solve for? So, if we’re talking about productivity, let’s say, because that’s kind of how we started this conversation, when we talked about it through that lens of, you know, eliminate, automate, and delegate. Well, there’s kind of two key parts of productivity, right, you’ve got the efficiency piece of it, which we can certainly talk about through that, that, you know, framework, but you also have the utilization piece of it. And it gets back to that, for that it’s the busy versus productive thought process, right. So you just start peeling back all of these layers. And that’s where I love tools, like process mapping, or value stream mapping, it really gives you a sense of like, what are all the pieces that are interconnected, and it really starts, the more people you bring into that mix, both kind of what I say directly involved, right, from people touching the process. More importantly, and a piece that a lot of people miss is the indirect folks, right? People that are on the outside circle of that, that are either before or after the process, maybe somebody in leadership, maybe somebody that just has a really unique perspective that we want to bring into this kind of, you know, mix of solving for a particular challenge. But that’s where all of those tools come in. And that is like that I literally just gave you That’s my methodology for figuring out where to start. Right? It’s super simple. You always start at the beginning like that’s that’s obvious. What makes it a little less easy is the fact that you’ve got to kind of navigate all of those different things and understand you know, how everything is interconnected and ultimately what what do we want to make the starting point for this particular you know thing?

Curt Anderson  38:41

Yeah, I love that and even like those uncomfortable moments Damon like when you said eliminate meetings does it like does it make everybody kind of like, like, you we wait we can’t eliminate meetings we’ve always had meetings you know, like so maybe you know, this is for all of us out here young like this. We’ve got we brought we brought the expert here just for everybody it’s a perfect Dave You know what it’s not for everyone else it’s just for me I mean, like he just even I desperately needed efficiencies little adjustment you know, it’s like going to the chiropractor and so that’s why we brought you this is really

Dave Crysler  39:11

just love it I’m happy to be here so

Curt Anderson  39:13

think about what David just said about you know, what if you eliminated meetings what Dave just said what if you eliminated internal emails so um for our friends that are souls out there, you know, working on your own or that type of thing? What if you convert you know, you always book a 60 minute meeting? Well, a lot of times you’re gonna go that full 60 minutes because you booked a 60 minute media What if you 45 minutes What if you convert them to 30 or to 15? Or just get more militant? What if you you know, what if you respond to emails at a certain time and like you know, I turned my email up like my computer my email does not ring or ding from eight till five every day. I don’t have my email my business email does not go to my phone. I refuse so weekends if after five o’clock I don’t know who emails me Yeah, what are their? I don’t put it out to both you guys. Are there any other like, push backs, any other suggestions that you guys have that would help kind of like really control our time? Did you have anything?

Dave Crysler  40:09

Yeah, I mean, I turned notifications off across all devices more than a year ago. Yeah. And I will never go back. Because it just it, you don’t realize how distracting That is, until you’ve done that. And then you’re like, how did I? How did I live without doing this? And now, you know, what that frees me up for is, you know, much more focused block scheduling. So back to your point, Kurt, like, they’re very focused times that I have to do really all of the key drivers for my business. And when I started to prioritize that way, it’s pretty shocking how quickly things changed. And you know, so again, you can apply that from a solopreneur standpoint, you can apply that in, you know, a large organization. And the big challenge in the bigger the organization, you get, obviously, the more kind of hurdles, you’ve got to cross in terms of rolling a change like that out. It’s it’s two totally different conversations to eliminate all meetings in a small to medium sized business compared to an enterprise level that has multiple facilities, multiple layers of leadership, multiple, you know, kind of initiatives rolling, it’s not impossible, but you certainly have to solve for that change management piece. So yeah, I would encourage people to, to certainly do the notification thing. And back to what you said to Kurt, you know, like, look for those opportunities to kind of capture your time back. You know, and you could do that one of a number of ways. You can shorten meetings, you can eliminate meetings, when it doesn’t appear that there’s, you know, great synergy, whether that’s with a prospect or a client or a networking partner, it’s okay to say, you know, I don’t think this really makes a lot of sense, you’re a great person. But you know, I think our time is better spent in other places. Thanks for connecting.

Damon Pistulka  42:03

That’s a big change I’ve made in my schedule. Now. I will people can see it on LinkedIn, I’ve got a link that, that you can schedule a meeting with me, I limited the amount of time that that link has available on my schedule the blocked out, it’s not just when I work, and also they get it as soon as I get someone booked, it says, sends him in a nice email and says, Hey, I just want to understand what you want to talk. Because if we’re not the right resource, if I’m not the right resource, I want to get you to the right person. And I cannot tell you how much those two steps have done. Because you you’d fill up and then you wouldn’t have people that would attend or you would have people that wanted to do you know, try to sell you something or something like that. And that’s all gone. Now you have really good meetings with with a few people every week, instead of having 10 on the schedule and realizing that those one or two are the ones you really wanted to get to. Yeah, it’s protecting your schedule is super important. And now there’s mentioned this the other day when Curt and I were talking on a live stream about Dorie Clark, the long game, read that book, she talks about it just be relentless about that. I’ve even done it with with podcast requests. I used to go on everyone now I really think about hmm. And then you think is it really where I should be spending my time?

Curt Anderson  43:24

Right? Yeah, right. And all right. And Diane buyer, my dear friend, how about this demon? One of the things to do is call an expert Dave Kreisler. Come on down.

Damon Pistulka  43:37

Yeah, this is cool. What she said to this is a great a great thing, and I don’t do it. I’m going to start doing it. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  43:43

I booked my meetings for 30 minutes, but I tell everyone I plan to be done in 20 I let them know that we can go 30 if needed. I can usually finish in 15 God bless you that is that no spectate. Yeah, so we’re sitting down and I’m saying isn’t it Dave Are you sitting down? I’m

Dave Crysler  43:59

sitting down Yeah.

Curt Anderson  44:02

Yeah, Robert you’re proud of the process is a gem. So this is our Let’s go here. One of our tags another tagline that we love to use Dave and I’d love to get your feedback on this. Sarah had asked you know, boy, what are things that I can eliminate? This is hard to do. Damon you know, one of my favorite lines, you know, it’s common niche down till it hurts niche down till it hurts. I think that’s one and I Gosh, I wish that was a superpower of mine. I’m conscious of it. I’m constantly preaching it. I wish I was great at it. It’s like how you know like focusing on your business. What marketing initiatives? What accounting what this what do you delegate? What do you automate? What do you eliminate? Do you have any comments as far as like, you know, as entrepreneurs, sometimes we’re going hey, somebody’s throwing money at you know, somebody’s waving a cheque and I’m gonna go grab it because we’ve got families to feed. How do you what does that line mean to you and how could that be applicable to your operational excellence? How do we niche down till it hurts?

Dave Crysler  45:01

Yeah, you know, I think every entrepreneur has navigated this or will navigate it right? If they haven’t gone through it yet, they certainly will. I know I did and have multiple times. And I think there’s always an initial fear that you’re kind of shutting down opportunities right back to your point, everybody, when you start a business is trying to grow that business, they love doing the thing, you know, and they’ve got to learn a lot of other skills and activities that go around it. And, you know, the reality of it is that, however, you’ve kind of, you know, grown up and come to be doing whatever it is that you’re doing. All of that is the superpower to connect to. And what I found for myself is just, I know, I can have a deeper level conversation with a certain subset of people. And so anytime somebody from outside of that comes into my world, it’s not that I don’t think I could add value there. It’s not that I don’t think I could have influence or help them. But the reality of it is, every time I do that, I am taking away an opportunity from somebody that I can provide even deeper level expertise to even a bigger transformation faster, you know, larger in terms of return on investment, however, you want to quantify that. So every time I do that, you know, not to say I haven’t and not to say I don’t enjoy it. And not to say that there hasn’t been big transformations. But that was the unlock for me, I had to recognize that every time I opened myself up to that, I am closing myself down to an opportunity to have an even bigger result.

Damon Pistulka  46:49

Just needed to stop and listen to this. Soak it in. We’re,

Curt Anderson  46:56

we’re we’re just taking a moment of silence. Drop, everybody do me a favor, pick up your mic. Drop it on the floor. That was Dave, you said, you know, if you’re gonna live up to expectations, yeah, just crushed it. So guys, do

Damon Pistulka  47:13

us a favor, rewind and listen to that. If you just gotta hear

Curt Anderson  47:17

back and listen to you again, think about you know, I had somebody told me this years ago and see if this resonates with with folks. When my I have a cousin I’m super tight with and this is like 20 years ago, we’re talking about work and this and he goes, Do you ever get chills when you’re working at something? Like I’m getting chills right now? And you’re like, I’m like, oh, yeah, you know, you’ve taught us you know, fired up. And you know, he’s like, that’s your zone of genius. Like, that’s when you’re in like, that’s when you’re crushing it. So, you know, Diane says, I’d love to sign her here. If you don’t niche down till it hurts. It will hurt much later down the road. Diane. Amen, sister, right? Yeah, it’s down till it hurts Dave, Dude, you just summed it up so perfectly of like, how do you get into that zone of genius. And I know, it’s not easy to always be there. And we’re gonna do things that we don’t want to do or maybe don’t want to do. But boy, when you can just share that passion. And I feel like you really found yours. I know. We’re like, I keep you know, we’re going into time. What was it like when you let your big corporate guy started off entrepreneur, Mom and Dad, you’re at the shop on the weekends. Watching Mom, Dad had some health challenges. You go corporate for many years? What was it like for you taking that entrepreneurial leap? Was it exciting, scary family obligations for folks out there that like, you know what? I’d like to do this entrepreneurial thing. Just share with folks what was that like for you? Yeah,

Dave Crysler  48:42

I mean, you know, what I will share is that entrepreneurship is not for everyone. And most entrepreneurs do not share all of the real skerries that come along with it. Most people aren’t real when it comes to the challenges, the feelings behind you know, constantly navigating the ups and downs of what that looks like big wins, huge lols you know, it really is a roller coaster. All that said, right? It’s a ton of fun when you find your people when you find your zone of genius, when you could literally talk for hours about something as simplistic as you know, eliminate automate and delegate. Right? So that that there is something to it, but recognize that it’s not for everybody I worked for for other people for a long, long time. And I would never trade any of those, you know, moments opportunities, any of it you know, and for me kind of the the Genesis to leave that, you know, I really had two paths, right? And I was exploring staying in that world. Just so happened for me I found an opportunity to, you know, to leave that seemed like It made a lot of sense. And, you know, here I am, you know, seven years later and, you know, still figuring it out.

Curt Anderson  50:10

Awesome. Okay, another another, another drop, don’t migrate there. I would have been, I think every entrepreneur can attest, you know, and thank you for your vulnerability and I’m right there with your brother. It’s, you know, I’ve been, I don’t have any hair left, right? Neuro thing for like, 34 years. What am I, you know, I have friends that are retiring now, like they were their civil servants, you know, or like, they wouldn’t work that you know, in pharma. And, you know, these med companies. I’m like, Ah, you know, what do you guys you know, now they’re retiring. I’m like, Oh, my gosh, like, what was I could have done, you know, so thank you for your vulnerability where like, entrepreneurship is challenging, but man, it is fun. Right? Yeah. One trade it for the world. And there’s one more comment here. Daymond. Gail says operational excellence equals Dave Chrysler, the debit Chrysler club, Dave is his superpower is to help improve your process. It is like found money. And again, if you guys missed it, I shared my testimonial. Dave, I cannot express my gratitude to you what you’ve done for me, which and I know what you’ve done for many other entrepreneurs and businesses out there. Let’s start winding things down. Damon, any questions, comments, thoughts? I know like you’ve been on fire this whole this whole interview jam session? What’s going through your mind?

Damon Pistulka  51:26

Yeah, I just think a day when I’m in helping people, right? I do. I was this week again, how can we eliminate that? Right? How can we automate it? How can we delegate this? And it’s amazing if you just go okay, first of all, can we get rid of it? Then can we have somebody else do it? And then if we have to, we’ll automate it. So those three things are so powerful. So in simple,

Curt Anderson  51:48

not necessarily easy, but it is simple, right? It’s like how do you find that place to start theme and I was in the mastermind last year with Dorie Clark, and that Dorie Clark group, we sat in the middle of Dorie Clark’s apartment, and I said, Well, you know, my buddy, Dave Clark, chrysler says this. And so like, I’m telling Dorie Clark, about, about how to automate delegate. And so yeah, let’s start winding down, folks. Let’s get in connect with Dave on LinkedIn. And where can folks find you? Let’s let’s go there.

Dave Crysler  52:21

Yeah, super active on LinkedIn, on on x, or Twitter, as we all still call it, I think. So yeah, I would love to connect with you, you know, super active on both of those platforms. You can always find me on my website as well at the Chrysler club. And yeah, we’d love to love to connect, love to have a conversation, but even even more, so just share ideas, you know, engage with each other and see how we can support more folks kind of doing this type of activity. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  52:57

And what I love is you have a tagline operate operational excellence on demand. It doesn’t have to be a super expensive, oh my goodness, you know what, you know, so if you’re a small manufacturer, if you’re a solopreneur you’re a small team, you can reach out to Dave and Dave can certainly help you if you’re working with manufacturers in a different space. And you’re like, man, they they could use a little help with efficiency. Dave’s definitely your guide tape before we let you go, Damon, I have one more question for you. Are you

Dave Crysler  53:26

ready man fire away.

Curt Anderson  53:29

Damon, we’re gonna go there are like It’s like we’re Dave we’re talking about like how gorgeous it is. It’s February but it’s usually you and I are like buried in snow. Right. We’re it’s one of my daughter Keiko skiing today. So spring is like, theme in our favorite year dude. Like spring? I Dave Are you baseball fan by any chance? Wow.

Dave Crysler  53:49

You know, I mean, I would say I was a bigger fan when I was a young a young lad than I am these days. You know the Tigers.

Curt Anderson  53:58

Okay. You know, I took my daughter to a Tigers game last year beautiful stadium. So let me just give you just a hypothetical. I’m asking for a friend. Okay. Let me just give you a hypothetical. Right Damon, don’t you think? Okay. Dave Chrysler, it’s a bottom of the night. There’s a guy on second base. Two outs, tie score to outside score guidance. Tigers, okay. Manager is like Okay, looks down the bench and says Chrysler to grab your helmet. Grab your bat get to the play, dude. I’ve got dinner reservations. I need that run scored so we can win this darn game. Dave Chrysler’s, you grab your helmet, you grab your bat, you’re walking to the plate. What’s your walk up song?

Dave Crysler  54:46

Now, I’m gonna spoil this a bit for you because you asked me this question before I did ask you last time. And and I totally threw you for a loop and my answer is still going to be the same and afterwards you I think we stayed on and we pulled it up on YouTube and you saw how epic this answer really was. So the answer for anybody that didn’t see that is Carmina Burana. Okay. Oh, for tuna. I’m telling you, you too bit. You’re gonna understand after this

Damon Pistulka  55:24

demon you audit the what’s the name of the song? It’s,

Dave Crysler  55:28

it’s oh for tuna, but just put in Carmina Burana and it’ll come up. So, you know,

Curt Anderson  55:35

I think when you were on with somebody else, and I did it

Dave Crysler  55:46

I mean, how could you not want to come out today? Yeah. I know what that is a good one. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  55:55

I you know, I think you run with Greg Davis you and you’re right. I did. I think I asked you guys that was

Damon Pistulka  56:00

a good one. No, that’s a good one. You think about that song. They use it in movies a lot too. Right? And yeah,

Dave Crysler  56:05

it’s it’s that moment, that moment. And waiting for

Curt Anderson  56:11

Dave Christ that you might have to drag that drop down in the chat box on LinkedIn for everybody. We have a little like a little weekend walk up.

Dave Crysler  56:19

So I encourage anybody that wants to you know, go out and look for some operational excellence to play that before you hit the floor. Yeah, for your morning walk. And I guarantee you will you will feel

Curt Anderson  56:32

that is awesome. Well, thank you for remembering I you know what, because I didn’t ask you that. I checked our first interview. I think I asked you with Greg machine. So thank you for playing along. Dave. I want to thank you for coming by my heart. I appreciate your friendship, my admiration, our admiration, respect, just off the charts for you. Appreciate what you do for the friends family and everybody on LinkedIn. Just you’re such an inspiration go giver. And we just appreciate you guys if you’ve been sitting around man, we’ve been going for 57 minutes had been sitting all the time. It’s a great time to stand up and give Dave a huge standing ovation. Thanks you’ve given us a free masterclass. Yeah. And that’s why Dave and I just loved and honored that you join us week in week out and that we get to do this in jam out with guys like Dave Chrysler, Damon, too. I told you this was like, Man, this was good. So guys go out and be someone’s inspiration just like Dave Chrysler Damon I can’t even talk anymore ticket away.

Damon Pistulka  57:30

All right. Well, thanks, Curt. Thanks, Dave. Just an incredible session with us today on the manufacturing ecommerce success show we’re talking about automate delegate eliminate your way to success. Man, it was a masterclass if you’re listening to this and you’re just got in at late go back to the beginning and start from beginning go to the end. That chat box was on fire. If you’re here with us on LinkedIn or Twitter, or x or Twitter, whatever you want to call it. We got some even half of Twitch today. So thanks, everyone for the comments. Thanks for being here. Those that didn’t comment. We love that you’re out there listening, and still appreciate that every single day. We’ll be back again with Monday. We got another guest on Monday, who we got up Monday, Curt.

Curt Anderson  58:19

Dude, we’re going to the MEPs we’ve got the director of the Connecticut MEP. Well, this Monday so we’re gonna Connecticut on Monday that we’re bringing in the Alaska MEP on Friday, dude, we’re going like from both ends of the coast to coast. So big MEP next week. It’s going to be awesome. Again, guys, thank you. God bless you have a killer weekend. Dave. Hang out with us for one second. Yeah, you guys. Thanks

Dave Crysler  58:41

so much. You guys. Tons of fun as always. See ya