How Tammy Patterson Systematized her Medical Courier Business so that Deliveries are Always made to her clients on Time!

Owen: My name is Owen Mcgab Enaohwo and welcome to Process Breakdown where I bring on successful entrepreneurs who come on here and reveal how they’ve been able to create systems and processes for their business there now. Enable them to run their business on autopilot without a constant involvement. And my guest today, her name is Tammy Patterson, she’s the CEO of CitySprint, which is the medical career service in Texas. Tammy welcome to the show.Tammy: Well, thank you, I’m glad to be here.Owen: So, what exactly does your company do and what big thing do you solve for your customers?Tammy: Well, we are a medical delivery service, and so the pain that we solve for the client is we deliver peace of mind. So, when our couriers arrive to pick up medical specimens, or tissue, or livers, or any kind of organ, our couriers are specially trained in picking up those type of highly sensitive specimens. And so, it gives the client peace of mind knowing that our couriers are highly trained in that regard, they’re also very professional looking. And we deliver quickly, and we also have true chain of custodies so what that means is we are picking up these specimens, scanning the barcode that’s attached to the specimen. Actually doing the delivery and then scanning off when we’re making the delivery and obtaining a physical signature. And we do it all digitally. And we use no paper, it’s all computer. And real-time as well.

Owen: And your customer are the hospitals right?

Tammy: Right. We service hospitals, diagnostic labs, transplant, or you know, companies that specialize in recovery of organs, etc. We service pharmacies. So anything that’s in the medical profession.

Owen: Definitely. And so, what I hear is that, we also like to do on this show is we like to tell the listeners the scale of your business so we can get behind and see how your business is doing. So, how many full-time employees do you currently have?

Tammy: Well, we have 14 employees that are in the operations, and then we have 45 drivers or couriers that are out and about in the Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio areas.

Owen: And what was last year’s annual revenue and probably what is expected at this year?

Tammy: Right. Last year’s annual revenue was 3.1, this year somewhere around 3 million. And then next year we’re projecting 4.5 million. And we’re doing some acquisitions. We got some lined up for 2014, so we’re really excited about 2014. We’ll be rolling at a specialty medical service, obviously we’re CitySprint. So, I’d say 60% of our business is medical, and 30% is critical part. So we do work for some of the large firms like Gulf Stream Aircraft on the ground, any parts delivered to them quickly. We also do work with Halliburton. And when they need parts delivered to the oil field, etc. But, in terms of the medical we’re going to carve it out have a specific, highly-niched, specialized courier service just for the medical. And it’ll have a unique name, etc. Obviously, it’ll be a division of CitySprint.

Owen: Yeah. And is this originally from your company, and it seems that it’s actually a franchise on its own. Now, you are a franchisee, right?

Tammy: No, we’re not really a franchise. We do have a partnership, or what we call an LLC with the other CitySprints around the U.S. But yeah, each owner own individual company, but we do collaborate and work with another in these other cities. Also, we may work with the CitySprint in the U.K., but it is owned by itself.

Owen: Oh, correct me, because it’s in my research was not correct, because I thought when I was researching that it’s a franchise and you guys are the franchisers. So what happens–

Tammy: No, we may eventually franchise because we do own the assets of 1-800-deliver, 1800deliver.com, the phone number 1-800-deliver obviously, and CitySprint.

Owen: Okay. So I guess I have to do more work on my research because I was [Unintelligible 00:04:20] to the main site, and this is might be, I wonder why I’m saying this. I went to the main site and it showed me the different states in the U.S.

Tammy: Right.

Owen: And so, I was clicking, and it’s a bigger company that you guys had to franchise from. Anyways, that’s not the case. Is it the case in the U.K. that they’re franchise and they’re sort of not the franchise in the U.K. and different in the U.S.? I’m curious.

Tammy: You know, I’m not sure about the U.K., I think they are wholly owned by a group themselves in the U.K.

Owen: Okay.

Tammy: Grown through acquisitions and some organic growth.

Owen: Okay.

Tammy: But here in the States we each own our own company but we do collaborate and work together as CitySprint or 1-800-delivery.

Owen: Okay. And so far, what would you say was the lowest point in your business and describe how bad it got?

Tammy: Well, you know, I would say, it’s interesting, the lowest point in my business has actually been this past year. In January I lost my business partner to cancer.

Owen: Sorry to hear about that.

Tammy: And she had been my business partner for almost 30 years. And so, how we had to navigate through the unthinkable, obviously, of losing a business partner has certainly had its challenges. But we’ve prevailed and we’re continuing to move forward, our mission is still the mission, to provide high quality medical delivery service not only in Dallas, Fort Worth, but Texas and beyond. And the business partner would want us to continue on. Some of the challenges though that we had with this is reassuring the customer that even though we had this huge loss and it’s a void in our operation, but that we had enough systems in place, and processes that that client in most cases didn’t even know that we had had this loss of a leader.

Owen: Okay. And that’s a good thing to know, because you’ve been able to systematize the company, so even when this happens you can still move forward and you still deliver results to your customers. And so, you mentioned during the [Unintelligible 00:06:27] before you guys used to struggle with management, technology, and HR, and even accounting. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Tammy: Yeah, because we would struggle with that, and struggle from the standpoint of hiring someone to be on our payroll, our staff, to do these functions that we felt in essence, were not real-time. That’s not what we’re in business to do, we’re in business to deliver high quality packages, or specimens, or whatever, irreplaceables in a timely manner. And sometimes we’re dealing within 45 minutes, and hour, 2-hour deliveries. It’s not like we have the next day to make deliveries. And so, what we realize is that all our focus our energy should be in doing that, not worrying about getting the billing out, or worry about accounting, or whether the computers are running properly, etc. So the idea was to outsource all that, what we call our back office. We don’t need to be focused on that in the company. So, we went about that process of outsourcing our HR, our payroll, our accounting, and also we outsource our technology. The other thing that we did was in 2004 we decided to go on the Cloud. We found a software vendor that could offer us a Cloud product for our operation software.

Owen: Feel free to say the name, we want as many resources.

Tammy: Right. And the name of the software is eCourier, and it’s specifically developed for the courier industry. And we just stopped that. In 2004 this is really cutting edge. Certainly it had some– we had concerns about, you know, well we don’t have control over our data, it’s out on the Cloud, could anybody access it. But certainly over the years those concerns and fears have been squashed because none of it came true. We haven’t had any issues with someone stealing data. We haven’t had any issues, and not “housing the data here locally”.

Owen: And nose dive into that whole thing of how you solve the problem because you realized, okay, now you had to outsource parts of your business so you can focus on your call which is delivering packages to your customers, critical packages that need to get it on time. And all the other stuff was kind of a distraction, so you decided to outsource. So let’s talk about a few of them. You said you outsourced HR by utilizing PEO’s–

Tammy: Yeah, right, a PEO, and the name of the company is Insperity. So primarily what we do is we co-employ our employees–

Owen: What is a PEO, because the listener might be wondering what that it is.

Tammy: It is a professional employment organization.

Owen: Okay.

Tammy: So basically, they manage all our HR, so obviously there’s a fee to that but we feel that the fee outweighs all the value that they bring to the team. And they work with us on developing our core values, our mission statement, developing our employees. We have training and access to training 24/7 through this organization and their portal. They also process our payroll, they run reports. Any time I have an HR issue they’re there for me. So I felt like that this certainly made sense because we are not in the HR business, we want to focus on delivering quality service to the client.

Owen: So, they help you with HR and benefits for your employees, that’s basically what they do, right?

Tammy: Exactly.

Owen: Okay. What’s the name again, so that the listener can–

Tammy: Insperity.

Owen: Insperity.

Tammy: Right.

Owen: And you mentioned that you outsource marketing, can you talk about that in details?

Tammy: Yes, we’ve hired a gentleman by the name of Victor Ornelius, and he’s actually a coach/marketing specialist. And what he does is he comes in and this is with our sales team on a weekly basis. And he guides us through our marketing profile. We’ve developed our marketing plan. And so he helps us with the execution of it, and also, he helps bring in outside vendors to assist us in this marketing plan, whether we need collateral materials printed, or we need PR done, such as what we’re doing here with your organization. We’re trying to get the word out about what CitySprint is all about, especially CitySprint Medical here in Texas.

Owen: Yeah, and you mentioned during the pre-interview that you outsource accounting. Can you dive into details about what you with that and probably–

Tammy: Yeah, in terms of outsourcing accounting, basically what we do is our accountant has access to our QuickBooks. And so, they can remote in at any time, and do bank reconciliation, cash receipts, any kind of PNL information that they may need or that I may need that can be quickly pulled just through that portal. Logging in or connecting with us through our QuickBooks.

Owen: One thing that you– Go ahead, are you done?

Tammy: Yeah, I’m done.

Owen: And one thing you mentioned is that regarding outsourcing your back office, one of the unique things I like about it is that you said you make use of people who work from home.

Tammy: Absolutely.

Owen: Can you talk about that and how does that work?

Tammy: Yeah. One of the things that we also liked about going into the Cloud with our operating software was the fact that we can answer the phone, dispatch, do any kind of reporting, accounting, whatever, remotely. So we don’t actually have to have an office, but we choose to because we just feel it’s a central location.  But that’s one of the things that’s really lended– the flexibility is the software being in the Cloud. So as long as I have an internet connection I can dispatch, I can take an order, I can work with drivers, I can work with their accountant, whatever. So clearly the internet has changed the way we do business. And it has also changed our business as well. Before 9/11 we were heave into delivering documents, title work, legal paper. It was very highly regarded as that is what the courier world was.

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: And then after 9/11, when everything began and the internet became more and more used, it became apparent that digital is taking our business away. The paper’s going away. So we had to shift our focus. And so, it was in medical that we found success. We considered at one time, medical being a one-off, a distraction, because you have to train the couriers, they have to know about [Unintelligible 00:13:14], they have to know about spill kits, they have to have special equipment, etc. But nowadays that’s a norm, it’s not a one-off. It’s how we do business.

Owen: Yeah. And so before you got to the point where your business is actually systematized right now, we’re going to talk about details about behind the scenes right now. But I want to go back to the point when it wasn’t systematized, when there was kind of a little bit chaos in behind the scenes. What was the very first things you did to create a system for the business back then?

Tammy: Back then it was probably going on a computer. Actually, beginning to capture the date in a computer. It was highly manual, you take an order, write it down on a piece of paper, and then pin it on a board underneath the driver name. But, clearly, computerizing the process of dispatch, and capturing that data in one location revolutionized our business. And then, with the internet came, and even revolutionized it more, made us more efficient, the data moves faster, quicker, cleaner. And we’re doing more with less. And we have live, real-time updates as well. It’s instantaneously. Used to, you would go out and maybe capture data on a device and you had to come back and download it at the end of the day. Everything is real-time now.

Owen: So, I think that the first you mentioned was, okay, in order to systematize it you have to figure out organize all the data and put it into one system, right?

Tammy: Right.

Owen: But besides that, what else– I’m trying to get the listener listening, “Okay, this is how she did it. First thing was organize all the data, get it out of being manually collected and put into one place.” What was the next thing you did?

Tammy: Well, in terms of systems, we looked at all the things that we touch. Why are we touching this data so many times throughout the day. We need to touch it once, and we want to automate it as much as possible. So, for example, when we enter an order into the system, we wanted to automatically price correctly, we assign it to a driver, we wanted to automatically pay the driver correctly. And then when we close out the delivery, we want to invoice the client correctly. And also, make sure when we close out this job that it’s captured– We’ve captured the data upfront. We close the data before we even assign it to a driver. So therefore, we don’t have to touch that anymore. All we have to do at the end of the day, or end of the week, or the end of the month is hit a button and generate invoices, and electronically as well.

Owen: Yeah, and one of the things you mentioned when I was doing your pre-interview, we were talking about systems that you had. You said that you have a system in your company where every function at CitySprint, you have at least 3 people who can perform it. Let’s talk about that. Why did you even put that in place in the first–

Tammy: Well, one of the things that we found that if someone was out, who knew how to do their work. And when I say work, whether it’s someone who’s in customer service, or someone who’s dispatching, or even a driver who runs a rout. We needed back-up because we never want the client to see a cease in service. So we felt lie if we trained pretty deep, then if one person is out, the other person can fill in, and if that person is not available, at least have a third back-up. And we do that in every function and position in this company. So, anyone that works for us does not just do one job, they will learn several jobs. But their primary function is what they’re good at, and that’s what they do day in and day out. But they all know that any given time they might be pulled to fill another position.

Owen: Can you give me an example of how that 3 deep system you have, actually been beneficial?

Tammy: Oh absolutely. For example, every day we may deliver over 500 medical deliveries a day, especially in the hospital district. And we have 5 to 6 foot couriers in this one area that are doing nothing but picking up and moving specimens all day. Whether it’s specimens, or tissues, or biopsies, or whatever. And if one of those couriers is out, we don’t want the customer or the patient to ever feel, or see a cease in service. Whether the courier’s not here, well we didn’t get your test because the courier wasn’t here to courier the biopsy results back and forth, etc. So, our goal is to train back-up for that. So if there’s ever someone out, and you know, that can happen, lack just happens, we can quickly shift another individual into that position who knows that rout.

Owen: And I’m trying to figure out like from the standpoint of, okay, if every employee is probably going to be able to do some of the roles in the company, and you want to see every task you have 3 people being able to do it.

Tammy: Right.

Owen: How do you load balance, because– here’s the one I say load balance because whatever situation where, [Unintelligible 00:18:20] situation where there’s not enough people for that task, the 3 deep level didn’t work. How do you make– Do you understand the question I’m asking?

Tammy: Right. I mean, yeah, I think I do. In terms of how do you balance that. There are times that we do run short. For example, I know several positions here in this company that I can function. I may not be the best at it, but I can at least get in and do that role, or play that role.

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: And that is expected of every manager, every employee, and even drivers. We want them to know other things besides just what they do, because then they become more valuable to the company. We have depth at that point as well.

Owen: And so, one of the questions that my listeners like is when I ask the guest to say, “Okay, imagine your business [Unintelligible 00:19:15] you built on one side is someone who’s not yet a customer who doesn’t know about you guys, or maybe is interested of the service. But on the other end of the conveyor belt is a happy customer who you delivered results. But behind the scenes there’s this conveyor belt that’s connecting the guy who doesn’t know to the guy who used the service and loves you, but  there are parts of your business connecting back and forth to make that happen. So, let’s talk about how do we get the person who just signed up for the service to the point where they now using the service and they love you guys. What are the things behind the scenes that make that happen?

Tammy: Right. So, you know, we call that on-boarding process, and then unmet expectations. So when we have a client who were recording, I’ll say that, and there’s a high possibility that they’re going to come on. What we do is that we collaborate with them, we want to get upfront what their expectations are of our service. And then we lay out a plan of action of how we’re going to execute in bringing on this client. And we do an on-boarding process, and everyone in the team is involved in it. We had key players that players that we appoint to the team. From, say, customer service standpoint, which is capturing the data, to dispatch, we’ll have a dispatcher involved. We’ll also have someone that’s in the back office involved as well. So we all come together as a team, and we work with the client’s team to on-board that process. So, right upfront we get agreement and what is expected. And then our mission is to carry that out and execute flawlessly. So, by the end of the 2 weeks or 3 weeks, the client is like, “I am so glad I chose CitySprint because here’s what they did. They responded quickly, they knew upfront what our expectations were, and  they execute it flawlessly.” So, I don’t know if I answered your question there.

Owen: Yeah, I was trying to figure out like, okay, so nowadays the on-boarding part where you meet together and you set the expectations so they know what to expect. But then now, when you get past the on-boarding part, what are the deliverable part where you’re actually delivering,  or when you call it a production part. I was trying to figure out how that works.

Tammy: How it works is, obviously, we have a task list, because it depends on what clients we’re on-boarding. If it’s a huge process, say, it’s quite a few deliveries a day, we have a task list, and then we have timelines that we have to meet. And then set it’s live date. And then after the live date we have weekly meetings that we meet with client, and we assess, “Okay, are we meeting the expectations? What issues or challenges have we had and what are the corrective actions?” And let’s face it, we’re not perfect, there are times when there may be a mistake or an error made. But what we do is we have what is called a corrective action report. We analyze the situation, we recover from the failure, and then put systems in place to prevent it from happening again. And one of the things that we hear over and over from our clients is the fact that we respond quickly when there is an issue, and we resolve it so it doesn’t occur again. And they like that response.

Owen: So let me go see if I can make the question a little bit more precise. So, I guess now you on-boarded the clients and every now and then there’s going to be a request for, maybe they want to deliver a heart or something, right? So, they press the button or whatever system they have on their end that, “We have this heart that we want to transplant, and we want you to deliver.” Behind the scenes, how do you guys take it over from there, is what I’m trying to get at.

Tammy: Okay. So, what client does is they call in the order and they tell us what it is, where we’re going to pick it up from, and where they want us to deliver it. So, from that point on, once we touch that specimen, or kidney, or whatever, we’re scanning, and their bar code, and we call this chain of custody, we capture that data at the time that we pick up. And then we deliver the specimen or the organ to the destination, and we scan off, and that scan has to match. And then we capture the signature of the recipient who’s signing for it. And then our job is done. But there are times that we have to coordinate deliveries with other vendors as well. So, say we’re picking up in Galveston, Texas, and they want us to ship to Oklahoma City. So, we would arrange for a courier to pick it up in Galveston, take it to the airport, tender it to the airlines, and then we retrieve it here in Dallas, and we drive it Oklahoma City, or we may even fly it on into Oklahoma City, those kind of things.

Owen: So there are times when you guys handle the entire thing all the way to the end, but there are time when you hand it off over to a partner, but then you also manage it and make sure that even though the partner is taking over, that it reaches the destination and it gets hands up to the customer that way. I get it.

Tammy: Right. And our job is to verify that and make sure that it did get delivered correctly.

Owen: And so, walk me now, I see how the business is systematized and it’s working the way it should work, but when you’re creating systems, there must have been challenges when you usually try to create a system, and how do you solve them?

Tammy: Certainly there are challenges, and how we solve them is, number one, you review it, you measure it, and then you correct if you need to correct. From measuring it, okay, what’s working, what’s not working. There’s a cost of that. It takes time to train folks on other positions. Some people don’t have any of that. We always have redundancy. We have redundancy not only in our people, but we have redundancy in our technology, we have redundancy in our communication equipment. Because we never want to not have a connection to our operation software or a connection to the customer. It is so important, because we are a 24/7.

Owen: Okay. And one of the challenges during the pre-interview, you said the whole thing with constantly having to train. It never ceases. So, that’s the challenge. But how do you solve that though?

Tammy: Well, obviously, we are constantly training, and we have to schedule. Scheduling is all part of that. And we’re looking at, “Okay did we have a back-up for this route? Or do we have a back-up for this position? And how many back-ups do we have?” And then we also have plan of action and we rehearse these things. It’s almost like an emergency procedure manual that we have. “Here’s what you do if this, this, and this happens.” Because like I said, life happens and especially in our industry, we never know when the courier’s going to have a flat tire, an accident, get sick, or the weather, we can’t predict the weather, etc. So, we have challenges and we practice these. We practice hand-offs, we practice– Certainly, we don’t do it when it’s busy. When we’re busy it’s all hands on deck and everything stops, and the whole focus is on the customer.

Owen: Yeah, and when you’re trying to systematize the business and the community, you have challenges, and you’re constantly training, so and so forth. But I’m curious, how do you stay committed at that point to this new deck, systematize the company, how do you stay committed to it, you’re going to do these challenges involved?

Tammy: Well, because we know at the end of the day, the end result is going to be that we’re more efficient, well-run company. And we always say, well, what keeps you up at night, right? And that would keep me up at night if we did not have back-up, if we did not have systems in place. So, I rest and I sleep well knowing that if this, this, and this happens we have a back-up plan.

Owen: That’s awesome. The end goal in mind is it just keeps you moving forward towards getting the next step. What next, we need to document and systematize, whereas the end goal in mind, let’s just do this one first right now and take steps to get there. And so, you have a system for everything that you guys do, I’m trying to figure out, how do your employees know exactly step-by-step what they have to do for a task? What system has been placed for that?

Tammy: Right. We have checklist, and daily duties, and expectations of each position. Every employee has a job description, they know what their primary function is but they also know who I’m back-up for. Our customer service for example, if one of the girls calls in sick, or a guy, they know that they have to call their back-up, and then they have to notify their supervisor that that’s what they’ve done. Same way as the driver. Our drivers, we ask them to have back-up, and if you commit to a certain time for us on a daily basis and you’re committing to the client, we need to know in a timely manner that you can’t make those obligations or commit to that time frame. So, it’s a team effort, we’re all in this together. And again, we always begin with the end in mind, we always think out there, think outside the box as well. We challenge the status quo, we’re never– If we become complacent then that’s not good, we’re not moving forward. And that’s one thing that I don’t believe in.

Owen: You mentioned during the pre-interview that one of the things you guys do is you communicate daily, but there’s 3 top objectives that they have to follow. Explain that.

Tammy: Right. I think that in any organization, if the employees or the workers don’t know what the top 3 objectives of the company are, then they’re not fulfilling the mission of the company.

Owen: Are the objectives like general objectives for the entire company, or is this specific to the role? I’m trying to get on [Unintelligible 00:29:41].

Tammy: It’s general, it’s overall. What are the top 3 objectives of the company. And the objectives that we have for this year is profitability, education, and growth. So, I could go to any employee and say, “Quick, tell me what are the top 3 objectives of this company for this year?” “Well, we want to grow by 15%, we want to continuously educate ourselves, and that we want to be profitable, we want at least 45% gross profit. So they know these things, and we involve them in this process. And then for this next year we’re currently developing our objectives for this next we year. We had a strategy meeting in October, and this next week actually in the first week of December we will be rolling out our objectives for 2014.

Owen: And I’m curious, even as they have the overview, 3 top objectives, is this something that gets transmitted down to their specific role? Like how those 3 objectives matters specifically in their role?

Tammy: Yes, and we talk about that. And we hope that their objectives or what they want to accomplish in their role is in alignment with the companies top 3 objectives.

Owen: So how would the driver explain those 3 objectives for his role as a driver? The reason I’m saying that is because I really want to get the listener to understand, okay, yes, you on the top you have your 3 main objectives, but then it needs to be transferred down to each of the people, their specific– So how do you guys do it?

Tammy: That is a very good question. We communicate it daily, when our staff log into the computers, they see the top 3 objectives. We have it on a board here in the office, so as the drivers come in they see that and I hope that they think when they see these objectives how it affects them. If I’m a driver and the top objective of the company is to grow by 15%, that means my income’s going to increase by 15%, and I want to be a part of that. And the other top objective is education. What else can I learn here at CitySprint to be more valuable to the client and to the company. And then the other thing is profitability. Okay, yeah I want to be profitable, I want to make money and I want to also be able to have a good living. And so what can I do? By maybe delivering air free deliveries, always smiling at the end when delivering with the customer, that way they keep coming back. So yes, it trickles down.

Owen: You also mentioned in the pre-interview that there is– you guys double up the priority system to handle and to get loss of specimens. Can you explain what that is?

Tammy: Right. Well, we have zero tolerance for lost specimens, and it’s true chain of custody tracking.

Owen: Okay.

Tammy: So what we do is, in terms of specimens, we have, obviously, devices that our couriers use, they androids. And then we have location barcodes that the courier comes in and he scans that barcode and that verifies he’s at the right location on this device. And then he scans in the pieces, and he’ll also indicate whether they’re refrigerated NDN or frozen. And then he goes to his delivery, he scans the location barcode again. He verifies he’s at the right location for that job, he scans it off those specimens, and if everything is scanned off properly he has no problems and he’s completed his delivery. But if he scans a specimen and it’s not part of that job, it kicks back and says, “This piece cannot be found, then he knows he’s got a problem.” And at that point he has to verify he is scanning the right specimen at the right location, and it if isn’t then he needs to correct it obviously. So it’s verification, it’s verifying on the front end that you’re at the right location, verifying on the drop location that you’re at right location, and then scanning on and off the specimens.

Owen: And I’m curious to that, I’m loving what I’m hearing, it’s like it has a lot of automation involved with this whole thing. But I’m curious, is this something where you guys, as you build the business, as you run into an issue that you now figure out how to make sure that it doesn’t happen again by incorporating to the system so that error or exception doesn’t happen.

Tammy: Right. And yeah, here’s another– how we collaborate with the client, right? We have a client that their issue was they didn’t have enough staff to staff the receiving area in their lab. And all the lab techs were upstairs. And so, what would happen is the couriers will come in, they’d scan their barcode, hit a button, they’d let us in, and then we would have to wait for the technician to get on the elevator, come down, and receive the specimen. So what we did was we collaborated with the client, they installed a camera, and then we wrote out procedures what our couriers would do. They would come in, they would scan the location barcode, they would place the specimens underneath the camera. And then they would hold their ID badge up to the camera. The camera is capturing all this, you know, who’s dropping what and what time is time stamping it. And then we also have a QR code that our courier scanned and that end serves what time they were there, and that they were actually at the right location. And then our courier takes a picture of that QR code. And that indicates that he was at right location when he dropped those specimens. So, now the client just has to come down at the end of the day and all their specimens are there, they’ve been delivered. So that was kind of a unique way of working with that client.

Owen: You can see all the smile at my face, I’m excited when I get technology and how technologies work.

Tammy: Right.

Owen: But I’m assuming that back then and the day before the technology, this– what were you guys doing? Well, are you guys smiling at this?

Tammy: Right. It was crazy you know, you had a phone, you had a beeper, or you had a two-way radio and paper, lots of paper. Every delivery had a delivery ticket, a piece of paper. And you had to get a signature, etc. So, we’ve slowly, over the years, I’ve been in this business 30 years and I can honestly say today it isn’t a lot easier in the process of doing deliveries. Although it’s much more competitive and almost commoditized, but it’s still– these are great time for living in, in terms of technology obviously. Some of the other things that we’ve done, that we’ve found, especially with lab technicians, when they’re working with specimens, etc., and we’re coming into a lab and we’re delivering more. Often times the lab technician would be, I guess, annoyed that they’d have to take their gloves off to sign our device or whatever. Of course the couriers were worried about contamination, contamination with my stylus, or touching my phone, or whatever. So, what we did was we came up with QR codes, and if a client wants we offer this to them, we will create QR code badges for their lab techs, with their name on it, etc. And when the courier comes in to deliver the specimens and he wants to obtain a signature, all that lab technician has to do is hold up their QR code, and the courier scans it, takes a picture of it and he’s on his way. And then it actually inserts that person’s name into the signature field, along with the picture verifying that they took a picture of that badge, and use the correct badge. And so that’s like the client time.

Owen: Wow, I mean, just hearing you say all this. QR code was just a couple of years it came out.

Tammy: Right.

Owen: I’m listening to you, I’m saying, “How does she keep up with the technology? This is impressive.”

Tammy: Well, certainly we collaborate with other couriers in the industry and also with our software vendor, eCourier. They’re a wonderful partner, they’re very receptive to request for changes, or software fixes, or ideas. And often times if it benefits mankind, they don’t charge us for these additions, programming, etc. As long as it benefits everyone else we’re good with it. This makes us that much better,

Owen: And so, how do you now track and verify resources being delivered by your employees.

Tammy: That’s a good question. We have in our system, we can certainly track the performance of an individual in terms of their task, what they had to do with regards to capturing an order, or placing an order for customer. We can capture the time, how long it took them to do it, how accurate it was in terms of dispatch, we can capture the decision time from the time the order came in to the time the dispatcher made the decision to assign it to the closest driver.

Owen: Right.

Tammy: And then also we can capture and measure what we call turnaround time. The actual time it took, from the time the order was placed, it was deliver, how much time does it take to do this delivery. And we can report that back to client as well.

Owen: Yeah, you also mentioned that you guys have as part of the attracting some employees, I’m jumbling my words. Employee satisfaction surveys, is there like, track it from the customer side, what the experience scores?

Tammy: Right. Annually, we do a customer service survey. Their clients and obviously we do it through constant contact. And also with our employees, we do a survey of employee satisfaction each year. We collaborate with Insperity or HR department who comes in and helps us, like the solo type, the survey. And then they deliver the results, and then we have a Q and A with employees from the results. And from that we have action plans or action items, what are we going to do to improve some of the challenges that we have. Whether it’s better communication, or better on-boarding, and the employee, or whatever. And we create teams, we want everyone involved in the process because not one person has all the knowledge or the ideas.

Owen: Yeah, go ahead. I don’t know why I’m– I’m just jumping at you. I’m so excited, I’m not letting you finish your conversation. Go ahead and answer, sorry.

Tammy: Well, yeah, I was just going to say that we want the employees to collaborate as well, we want their input. It’s so important, and we want them to challenge the status quo.

Owen: I think it also goes back to that, your system of having 3 deep because now you’re involving them with this part of also– after getting the results in surveys, getting action points, you’re involving them back. So it’s collaborative and you can improve the system.

Tammy: Right, yeah. In the process of training them 3 deep and learning other positions in the company, they have a whole appreciation for what the other person does.

Owen: Definitely. And since your business now, you’ve set it up today, it literally runs without you. I’m just curious, what been the longest time you’ve been away from the business?

Tammy: A month.

Owen: That’s nice.

Tammy: Yes.

Owen: What were you doing?

Tammy: Where did I go? I went to Europe.

Owen: Oh nice, nice, nice. And now, how would you say your business has been transformed as a result of systematizing it?

Tammy: Well, it certainly was a testament when we lost one of our key leaders, one of the owners. And this past year it was a testament to how we had the systems in place, and so the company could continue to run, right? And right now, with that, having this other partner here we already have looked and reorganized the organization to where it can run with just one leader, but we’re also developing other leaders as well. We’ve added some new positions here and we’re in the process of training because we’re looking at long-term, 3-5 years out. What is the succession plan for even myself.

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: Who’s going to succeed me, because the unthinkable can happen at any time.

Owen: Yeah, and so, how do you say your personal life has been transformed as a result of systematizing your business?

Tammy: Well, I sleep better at night, of course. I don’t know, that’s a good question. I haven’t really thought about it other than the fact that it’s just peace of mind.

Owen: Yeah, and with all this, you know, free time that you’re now having peace of mind like you just mentioned, where do you focus the most now on in your business?

Tammy: Operations still, clearly, and in the dispatch, because that’s where it all happens. Obviously, a lot of the data that we used to capture on the front end ourselves, now we have interfaces with our clients. So, they capture the data themselves and push it to us.

Owen: Okay.

Tammy: We’re pulling and getting it. So, basically we touch that data once, they enter it once and then it comes over into our system. Sometimes we have to scrub the data a little bit, but for the most part, when it comes over it’s clean data. And all we had to do is assign it to the closest driver or whatever. So, I’m not sure where I was going with that–

Owen: So what do you focus now?

Tammy: So we focus on the dispatch, and so, it’s the specimen pick-up, verifying we’re getting the right specimen, we’re at the right location to delivering it and meeting the customer’s goal, their deadline time, whatever. So it’s overall satisfaction.

Owen: And what I get from that is you now tend to focus more, instead of inside of the business and doing stuff, you’re focusing more on improving the system.

Tammy: Exactly, right.

Owen: I work in all the business, that’s why I get from that.

Tammy: As a matter of fact, before I had this meeting, we were reviewing our dispatch procedures and we’re filling in the holes in some areas that we feel that need to be revamped.

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: And so it’s good to review your systems, and your procedures often. Never just take things for granted. Well, that’s the way where we’ve always done it, that’s our procedure. Now, we need to review it, we need to challenge it, and see what we can do to improve it. One of the challenges we had was, well before, with some routs, we pick up multiple, multiple specimens. They may be bag full of specimens.

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: And every once in a while a specimen may fall out of one of those  bags, and the when you get these bags of specimens, there’s only one barcode and it’s on the outside of that one big bag. So you really don’t know how specimens are in that bag, right?

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: And we had had the issue of a courier overlooking the specimen that have fallen out or maybe didn’t know it had fallen out, and they may not find it for a day or so. I think we’re in this deep in the crevice of their bag or whatever. So one of the things we implemented was at the end of each courier’s, I guess. day, they have to send us a picture of their bag that’s empty. It has to be an empty bag. And so we have verification. And in this process we had couriers, oh my gosh, I just found the specimen that had falling out of a bigger bag, And so we were able to recover quickly, as opposed to having that specimen, sit it overnight, or over the weekend, or whatever. So that’s a process or a procedure that has really saved us on several occasions in the past. And so certainly that has paid off.

Owen: What I love about what you just said, it sounds like when there is an issue, there’s now an opportunity for you if you go, okay– There’s an issue not because of the person but it’s an issue because of the system. How do we create a much better system where it enhance the system we have so that that issue never happens again. That’s what I’m getting from that.

Tammy: Right. And that is what we do almost on a daily basis. And it’s why we’ve come up with what we call a CAR, a Corrective Action Report. So anytime there’s ever an issue, a service there, or whatever, we resolve it quickly, and then we examine it. We say, “Okay, what could we have done differently to prevent it from happening?” And then moving forward, what systems, procedures that we put in place to keep that from happening again. And we share this with the client as well. We want them to be reassured that, number 1, this was very important to us, number 2, we’re all about preventing it from happening again.

Owen: Yeah, and during the pre-interview you mentioned, because when I asked the question of now with all these free time, what else are you focusing on? You mentioned that you’re also focusing on group strategies in your business. Can you talk about that?

Tammy: Right. Certainly, the courier industry is a mature industry, and a lot of our competitors are starting to come after the medical business as well, They find that, “Okay, our paper has gone away, and now we’re going to have to learn how to pick up and deliver medical– the training, the equipment, etc. So, there’s a lot of challenges there. One of the things that we are looking at is, okay, what’s the next big movement in the delivery industry especially for a local courier service. And so, we’re looking at retail to consumer. What is that going to look like in the next 2-5 years?

Owen: Okay, so we got disconnected and we’re back. So you were answering the question about, now with this free time that you have, because you’ve systematized the business, we are now focusing on where next to take the business and continue with the answer.

Tammy: Right. So strategically, from the strategic standpoint, where do we want to be next? Obviously, we’re in Austin, we’re in San Antonio, now we’re looking at Houston, and how are we going to get there? Certainly, we can do it with acquisitions and also organic growth with our existing customers. So, that is our strategy for 2004, is to have at least one acquisition, if not two.

Owen: You mean 2014?

Tammy: Did I say 2004? 2014.

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: Focus on opening up in Houston.

Owen: Okay. And so–

Tammy: That is our strategic plan.

Owen: And so far, this interview is– someone was listening to this and someone who is interested. And systemize doesn’t get you a business, and they’ve just learned how the systems we haven’t placed in your own business. What we say is the very next step that someone listen to this point in the interview should take to get started with having a business that can grow without them, successfully.

Tammy: Well, I think they need to, middle one examine what are they good at, right? And what is their core business and focus on that, and that anything else outside of that, consider outsourcing it, letting an expert do that. Ad then, obviously, examine your processes and your procedures, and how you can document those. It’s very important to document because if you’re not around, somebody has to be able to pick it up and do it, right?

Owen: Yeah.

Tammy: And then train 3 deep, it’s really simple. This training, training, constantly training.

Owen: Yeah, and I’m curious, this whole mindset you have, I’m sure that it has been influenced by some books, or something. So what books will say that influenced you the most and why?

Tammy: Right. Well, one book in particular, it’s Bob Prosen’s book. Bob Prosen is, and [Unintelligible 00:49:50] my mind just went blank [Unintelligible 00:49:53]. Oh my gosh.

Owen: Let me see if I could Google it real quick. Bob Prosen?

Tammy: Bob Prosen, PROSEN. And it’s really challenging what you thought was business is not. And I’m trying to think, it’s got a unique name to his book. I can get, I don’t know if I have it up here or not. I don’t think I have it here.

Owen: I’m online right now, so let me see if I could find this.

Tammy: Yeah, Bob Prosen.

Owen: Oh, is it called Kiss Theory Goodbye?

Tammy: Yeah, the Kiss, Kiss Theory Goodbye. What we always thought about how to run a business, it’s not right, kiss the theory goodbye. This is really how you run a business. And he talks about, there are 5 components in the business. There’s customer service, there’s sales, there’s operations, there’s finances. And then, obviously, people.

Owen: Yeah, I’m glad I [Unintelligible 00:50:52]  check the names so that, that way the listeners can get their resource in check.

Tammy: Yeah, Kiss Theory Goodbye is a great book to read if you’re running a business. And it talks about the top 3 objectives, always make sure your employees, and everyone knows what the top 3 objectives are at the company.

Owen: And what’s the best way for the listener to connect with you and thank you for doing this interview.

Tammy: They can certainly email me. tPatterson@citysprint.com.

Owen: And will you also be willing to continue this conversations, assuming the listener has a question about something that we’ve covering during this interview that I didn’t get to ask you. Will you be willing to engage them in the comments?

Tammy: Sure.

Owen: Okay. So, listener are you hearing that, if you have a question, you think that I didn’t ask, and I did ask Tammy. Just go ahead and leave a question in the comments, and hopefully we get her to respond. And one more question for you, is there a question that you are wishing that I ask you during this interview because one reason or the other I didn’t ask you to question. If so, post the question and [Unintelligible 00:51:54].

Tammy: Well, I can’t think of anything, I really can’t.

Owen: I think one thing I can think of is initially, in the beginning of the interview I said that I did my research which turned out to be wrong, and thought you guys were a franchise. So I want to make sure that we clarify in the mind of the listener that I made that mistake. So, explain that you guys are not a franchise.

Tammy: Yeah, we’re not. Each individual, we own our own company but we as a group, there’s a group of us, there’s 8 of us that own the asset 1-800-deliver, 1800deliver.com, CitySprint. And so, we keep that website up and running, and you would click on it. You can go to any city you want to and place an order.

Owen: I’m glad I actually clarified that because I wanted to be sure that I say it right.

Tammy: Yeah, sure.

Owen: Yeah, and so now I’m talking to you the listener. If you’ve enjoyed this interview so far, what I want you to do is go ahead and leave a review on iTunes. And to do that you go sweetprocess.com/iTunes and leave a positive review. The reason why is because the more reviews you leave on iTunes the more other people, other entrepreneurs be exposed to the interview. And the more entrepreneurs we have exposed to the interview, the more excited I am to go out there and get more guest like Tammy to come on here and discuss how their business works. This is process breakdown, you see how we go behind the scenes and talk about how entire business works, leave reviews, we get more people exposed to date, and we grow this podcast. And finally, if you are at a stage in your business where you are tired of being a bottleneck and you could no longer be the only one that knows how the stuff gets done well, you want to start documenting procedures. And the tool you can use is called SweetProcess. You can sign up for a free 40-day trial of SweetProcess. Tammy, thanks for doing the interview.

Tammy: Your welcome, thank you for the opportunity.

Owen: Yeah, we’re done.

Tammy: Alright, good.