How to Make Use of Systems to Grow Your Business from a One-Man Operation and replace Yourself with Trustworthy Employees! – with Brian Kaldenberg

OWEN: Hi, my name is Owen McGab Enaohwo and welcome to the Process Breakdown where I get successful entrepreneurs who come on here and reveal how they’ve been able to create systems and processes for their businesses that now enable them to run their business literally on autopilot without their constant involvement. My guest today is Brian Kaldenberg and he’s the owner of ProofreadingPal. Brian, welcome to the show.BRIAN: Hi Owen, thanks for having me.OWEN: So Brian, let’s get started. What exactly does your company do and what big pain do you solve for your customers?

BRIAN: Well, we’re online proofreading and editing service. What we do is we combine both proofreading and editing as a single process. What makes us unique is we use two proofreaders on every document. So every document gets 2 sets of eyes. It just eliminates or makes it even less likely that the errors are going to slip through the cracks. Basically, what we do is we proofread through spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization errors. We edit for sentence structure, clarity, consistency of style. And then finally we make helpful comments and suggestions. And another thing that’s unique about service is we accept and proofread documents 24/7, and we offer as fast as 90-minute turnaround speeds. There’s obviously word count stipulations for the size of the document we can turnaround in 90 minutes or 3 hours, but we do have that availability to customers who are in a time crunch. And most of our proofreading is done from work at home staff, only the English individuals. They even have their masters or PhD, and they work from home across the United States. And we do have an in-house staff of about 7 employees.

OWEN: Okay, so you have, how many full-time employees again?

BRIAN: If you count me, we would have 4 full-time employees. And then we have 3 part-time employees.

OWEN: And I think during the pre-interview you also said that you have about 55 proofreaders who’s on contract basis too, right?

BRIAN: Right.

OWEN: Okay. I always want to know the scale of your business in terms of what you do in annual revenues. So, what you did last year and what do you expect to do this year?

BRIAN: We just wrapped up our 2013 books. We did 619,000 in gross sales. We’re little under 4 years old right now. And for 2014, I’m anticipating between 800 to 850,000 in revenue.

OWEN: Okay. Let’s talk about the lowest point in the business and describe how bad it got.

BRIAN: Well, when we first started this business it was just me. And I kind of bit off more than I could chew in the early going. We really wanted to create a business model that really differentiated from the competition. And several ways to we decided to do that was number 1, accepting proofread documents 24/7. A lot of companies don’t do that. Number 2, have live customer service everyday of the year from 8 am until 10 pm Central Standard. A lot of other companies, 6 o’clock they’re done with customer service, they’re not available on the weekends. And so those 2 things really put a lot of stress and on me [Unintelligible 00:03:30] the gates because we just didn’t have a lot of proofreaders. And then, my time which is just totally wrapped up in the business working 100-hour workweeks, always attached to my computer, my cell phone. I couldn’t really go out to eat. And definitely couldn’t really go on vacations, and it really took effect because I can never really unplug. So, I think my wife was starting to get a little bit upset with me too. So I would say it wasn’t low point really for me. It was exciting, but at the same time, it was extremely stressful. Not right out of the gates but like maybe from year 1 to year 2, that was just super stressful, because we’re growing so fast and I was still managing everything.

OWEN: So in the pre-interview you mentioned how the main problem then was no time to handle stuff while at the same time trying to keep up with sales, recruiting, and even hiring new contract proofreaders. So, I think  the main issue was time being an issue. And then, how exactly did you solve the problem at that time?

BRIAN: Well, the easy answer was to hire employees. But the hard part is to make sure that those employees could do what I needed them to do. And so, early in this business I read a book called E-Myth, and E-Myth really stressed to document what it is that I was doing. And so, when we hired the first 2 employees, they weren’t here for even longer than a year. And so, the problem was that when they would leave, all that knowledge they had, I had to retrain someone else from scratch. So what I started doing is I started the manual, the very beginnings of it, and I would train the person to do everything I was doing. And I have them in their down time adapt, and build that manual to the next level. And so, the manual basically explains everything that we might encounter as a customer service representative, or now we have a sales person. There’s just hundreds of different situations that we might encounter in the day, and I couldn’t be there to answer all of their questions, and I didn’t want them to have to call me all the time. We need to start letting them make those decisions for themselves. And so the manual really explain those situations but also explain how our system works. And the manual’s always adapting, so it’s never static, it’s an organic manual, we’re always trying to make improvements to it. And our systems and processes are always tweaking a little bit. But the manual really helped, it was one of the first major problem solvers.

OWEN: And so I’m curious to know, what  were the very first thing after realizing and after reading the E-Myth, decided you have to systematize your business. What was the very first thing you did towards that goal? Because I want to give the listener a kind of inside as to what you did at that time.

BRIAN: You mean, to just get the manual going?

OWEN: Yeah, I mean to get the business more organized. What was the very first thing you remembered that you did to get it systematized?

BRIAN: Well, there was a lot of things that I was doing myself. And whether it’s calling back customers. We do a courtesy call when you’re a brand new customer. And we want to make sure you got your document, we want to make sure that you’re satisfied. I want to find out how you heard about us. I want to ask you if you have any comments or suggestions for us. And word count discrepancies, another thing that we battled a lot. And we still battle but we’ve gotten a lot more efficient now. We trust the customer to report their word count. But sometimes they make an error, and so we trust the proofreaders to report that but they don’t always report that. And just getting all that the way we handle every situation down on paper was really just a very first thing that helped me, and I know that’s not really a system, it’s a– I had processes in my head that I needed to get down on a Microsoft Word document so that other people could handle that situation the same way I would. And so, really the very first thing that I did was I just started writing out, “Here’s how we handle word count discrepancies. Here’s what we do to do a courtesy call. Here’s how we do gift packages.” We send all customers, I call it moving in with your customer. We send them a gift package. It’s just got a ProofreadingPal ink pen, a little note that says thank you, and a branded notepad. Get that in the manual because that always something [00:08:52] take it. Basically, the things that I was spending an hour, two hours on a day, I started to get down the manual so then I could delegate those things.

OWEN: Go ahead, complete your statement.

BRIAN: That would probably be the very first thing that we did.

OWEN: Okay. So let’s talk about specific systems that you have in place right now that allows the business to run without you. You mentioned that– state the problem you had initially where giving custom quotes for projects larger than 15,000 words. And also after that, state how you guys solve the problem.

BRIAN: Okay. That’s another big problem, a big bottleneck that we experienced. As we grew we started to give custom quotes for large projects, and I just wasn’t able to answer all of those calls. Sometimes I wasn’t in the office. So the customer service agent would answer the call and we didn’t have any model for them to be able to give an accurate quote. And what they’d have to do is they’d get the information from the customer as far as how big is the document, how soon they need it back, their English is a second language or not, does it require any special things they want us to watch out for. Then our customer service agent would have to call me and explain things to me. And then I would tell them, “Okay, yeah, let’s charge this and let’s pay the proofreader this.” So then, they’d have to call back the customer and relay that quote. So what we did is we developed our system. We call it the large project calculator. So now, based on the series of algorithms a customer calls in, our customer service agent is trained to take the information that we need and they’d put that in the calculator as far as word count, type of document, when they need it back. And then the calculator will basically spit out a price for what we’d like to charge for that. So now, that eliminates me from the equation because we’ve put the equations in the algorithm. And they can give a customer a quote, right, than in there. And then also, once we get a large project the customer decides to go forward with this, now we have to enter that into the system. And we have this system to just handle normal projects. For a while, there we didn’t have a system to handle projects and so we’re doing it through just email. And I was just trying to keep track of everything and we had an excel document. And what we did is we create the ability for our customer service agent to then create a large project. And also, they didn’t have to call me now to decide what to pay the proofreader. The system will calculate what we’d like to pay the proofreader. They can also hit a button, so let’s say it’s an APA dissertation. APA is a certain style of academic writing. They can select, it’s an APA dissertation, they can hit generate proofreaders, and our system will highlight the proofreaders who we’ve already identified that have the skill sets, so they would be a very good choice for an APA dissertation. So it even helps them select the proofreader. That’s one example of how we’ve taken things from what used to be in my head to what used to be kind of an organized, now we’ve systemized it.

OWEN: Okay. So on one hand you created a means for them to give custom quotes without them involving you. And on another end, I guess in addition to that, now the putting tool itself can also calculate what the quotes would be. I’m curious. Does this start out like that? I mean, how did you build this?

BRIAN: Well, actually, I remember April is one of our busiest months and it was 2 Aprils ago, it was around Easter time and this was when my life was just crazy. And I had my wife drive to Easter. And so I was like 2 hours in the car, and I just sat there with my laptop and I wrote out how I wanted the system to work in a Microsoft Word document. And I got it exactly how I wanted it, though of all the different things it needed to happen for it to work correctly. And then I sent that word document off to my web developer, and that’s how we get a lot of things done. ProofreadingPal is I come up with the idea, I put it in a word document for how it needs to work and then I send it off to my web developer. And then he can take those instructions to actually develop the system in our back-end.

OWEN: Okay. And another thing you said you had– end of the building for the system is that you built a large project proofreader report card. Explain what the problem was and how this solves that?

BRIAN: Well, so, we had the large project system created, and then we got the calculator created. But we’re still having the issue of the proofreaders would stop to call me, like James is our sales representative, he would know who to assign, but it’s the people who were there at night or on the weekend who weren’t quite as familiar with our proofreaders than just everybody off hand. So if a project came in at night like 8 o’clock, and we needed to get going on it, it was a large project. They would still have to call me again and they’d have to tell me– I ask them, “Well what style is it?” “Chicago style.” “Okay, is it academic or is it a business document?” And I’d have to get information from them still, and then I would say, “Okay, well offer it to Lorrie, Tom, and Sarah.” And so, we hadn’t eliminated that bottleneck yet. So what we had to do is first we had to have a way where all the proofreaders are in our system  already. We had to have a way to assign them skill sets. So now, what we’ve done is we assign them, like if it’s an APA document, we assign our top 3 people, and then we decide our next 3 choices. So if it’s a rush project and it comes in, we got to get someone on it right away. The customer service agent now can just hit generate proofreaders for an APA, and then see the people highlight in green and yellow. And they would just click on all their names and give them all access. Now, if it wasn’t a rush project, maybe we had like 7 days to do it. It wasn’t very big, well then they’re trained to only give the people in green who are our first choices access. And that’s kind of how it works. And then if no one picks that project up for like a day or two, well then we go ahead and give the other people access to it, who will be our 2nd choices.

OWEN: And you also mentioned that you built also a system to handle word count discrepancies, how do you do that?

BRIAN: Okay, that’s a problem. First of all, to refresh everyone again, we request that the customer report an accurate word count, but they don’t always do that. I’d say about close to 7-10% of the time they don’t report an accurate word count. So the proofreader needs to identify the word count and email us to report it. And when we first started, they’d have to go into their email and email us their own email. They’d have to put in the subject line the project ID, they’d have to say, this is what the word count was reported, this is what I’m getting the word count as– And our email would come into our customer service. Customer service would have to go in, find that project, download the file, look at it, and verify that what our proofreader was telling us was true. And then we didn’t always charge the customer. Because if they just spent 200 bucks and they reported their word count and maybe it was only like an extra dollar, they should’ve had to pay, we’re not going to charge them for that. But we still wanted to email them to let them know, just so next time they understand they didn’t actually report their word count correctly. Now if it was a bigger discrepancy, then we would have to charge them in PayPal. And it used to be based on we have an algorithm that we have that they have to calculate using the calculator to determine if we’re going to charge the customer or not. Then they’d have to type up an email, send it to them, whether they’re going to charge him or not, and then if they did have to charge him go charge him. So what we did is we wanted to make that– that whole process right there was probably, it would take someone 10-15 minutes. What we want to do is, if these are happening a couple of times a day, it’s making a lot easier for everybody, the proofreaders, and our customer service agent. So now, when a proofreader identifies a word count discrepancy, we made it so they can just report the discrepancy right in the system. They don’t have to go and email us. And then in the system that project ID would highlight in the bottom of the screen in blue. And that lets our customer service agents know we have a word count discrepancy to deal with. The system also automatically sends an email to our customer service email account. So, right there we eliminate the proofreader having to go and send an email. Then our customer service agent can just click that link, go in, it takes them right into the project. They still have to download the file and verify the discrepancy. But then they can just type in the new word count that they’re seeing into our system and then hit resolve. And that updates the word count for the proofreaders so they’re paid. And then the system automatically tells them if they need to charge the customer or not, so there don’t have to be more calculations. And then we have template, we created an Outlook template. One that says charge customer, one that’s for not charging the customer, and then all they have to do is fill in a little information in that template and send it off to the customer. So we’re still letting the customer know about the discrepancy. But that’s probably shorten the time spent from maybe 15 minutes down to 5 minutes. And it just eliminates a lot of human error that could happen with calculating on the calculator.

OWEN: So, what are the systems that you said during the pre-interview that you built for errors with time estimates? Explain how that works.

BRIAN: You said the time estimates for the proofreaders?

OWEN: Yeah.

BRIAN: Okay. So, what was happening is we were getting a lot of projects on our board, and it was kind of hard for our proofreaders to pinpoint ones that might be becoming urgent, or might be where the proofreader may have forgotten to upload the file, or they thought they uploaded it and they didn’t. And so what we decided to do is let’s have our proofreaders, when they accept the project, let’s have them have to give a time estimate from when they think they’ll be done with the project. And from a second proofreader standpoint, because we use 2 proofreaders, that makes it really nice because they can kind of see when a first proofreader might be done with the project. So then, they can be hanging around to try to pick it up. But another thing that would happen is if a proofreader goes 2 hours past their time estimate, a red box would show around their time estimate. And that would draw our attention, that would kind of highlight that project for our customer service staff so they can then see, “Okay, what’s the issue here?” And where it would become an issue here is let’s say it’s a 10-hour turnaround project and there’s only 1 hour left. And their second proofreader had their time estimate for 4 hours ago when they thought they’d be done. That would be a sign that maybe they thought they’d uploaded the project and they didn’t. So we can send them an email and say, and find out, “Hey, what’s going on with this project?” So it was kind of a way to draw attention to projects that could become problem child’s in the future.

OWEN: So what am I getting from this is that you have different aspects of your business that you built different systems for them. But it’s not that it was all built all at once, right? Is this something you build over time and you kept on adding more stuff to it based on bottlenecks that you saw?

BRIAN: Oh yeah. Every month we’re making slight improvements and if I look back at just where our site was both front end, back end, manual, or CRM. We have a custom-built CRM. It’s substantially different now than it was a year ago and then you look at where we’re at now versus 2 years ago. It’s just crazy how much different it is. But it certainly doesn’t all happen overnight, it’s just steady, constant, improving. And as long as you’re just doing that, you’re going to slowly build a better product or service.

OWEN: So, I want you to imagine your business like a conveyor belt where one point you have maybe a student now who’s looking to do proofreading of their paper or whatever, and maybe stumble upon your site. And on the other hand is there’s a customer who’s happy, you guys have delivered something that they were not expecting. But on one end the person is needing your service, on the other end your service is delivered, they’re excited. I want you to take us behind the scenes and show us how the different parts of your business are working together to make that happen in terms of a conveyor belt.

BRIAN: Okay. Could you repeat that one more time?

OWEN: Okay. So, on one end, you have another customer yet but on one end, you have someone who needs proofreading services, right? And probably searching the internet for a particular provider and stumbles across you guys. And on the other end of the conveyor belt, you have someone who has used your service. That same person now has used your service, they’re excited, they love the service. But I want to take the listeners behind the scenes to understand how the different parts of your business and different people in your business are working together to make this happen. And let’s talk about what’s making that happen.

BRIAN: Okay. So, when the customer comes to our site, they need to submit a project for proofreading. And so there’s a lot, they have to put in their word count, and that’s how we charge. We charge based on how many words your document has, and then the rate we charge the customer depends on how soon they need it back. So the faster they need it back, the more expensive the project gets. So they have to put in their word count, they have to choose their turnaround speed, they have to upload their file, they have to choose their writing style, if it’s APA, or Associated Press. And then we have a little document description area where they can type in anything special they want us to know about the project. And then their name, and their email, and their phone number, and that sort of stuff, and then they pay. Then their project comes in to our system. That customer then is send order notification email. And now what we have to is now that’s in our system, a lot of the pieces of that order need to be relayed to our proofreaders because they need to be able to see– We don’t show the proofreaders the customer’s name, email, phone number, anything like that, but they still need to be able to see what is the turnaround speed, the word count, the writing style. They need to be able to download the document. And then the way the proofreaders are paid is the same way. They’re paid rate per word, and the rate that their paid goes up as the turnaround speed goes up. And so what happens is the project comes into our system. And it’s the way our model works is we use 2 proofreaders in every document, you can work whenever you want. So it’s competition-based. So when a project comes in, especially the faster ones, they’re snapped up real quick. It’s first person to get to it gets it. Then our system then changes, that project was waiting for first proofreader, now it’s under first proofread. And then that proofreader proofreads it, and then they upload it back into the system. And then that project becomes waiting for second proofreader. And we have noises that go off in our system, so the proofreaders, if they don’t want to be watching their computers all the time, they can just turn the volume up and hear the noises, and know that a project has just become available. And then when it becomes available for second proofreader, same thing, the second proofreaders all scramble after it. First one to grab it gets it. They download it, and then they upload it back when they’re done. And then that project becomes complete. And in our system it goes to the done projects, the proofreaders are paid, and then the customer is sent an email so they’re notified their project’s ready, and then they can go and download it. That’s the basic way our system works. And then we have lots of bells and whistles to kind of branch off of that, just little things we’ve added in the last 4 years.

OWEN: And thanks for sharing that. So I’m curious, what challenges did you experience when you initially tried to create a system, and how did you solve them?

BRIAN: Well, what we did, and we still just kind of function this way. We got to where like what I just explained there. We got that built. And then we just launched the site, and launched our advertising , and started getting orders. And really just problem solve from there. So like, I can give you an example. When we first launched, if the customer uploaded the wrong file accidentally. There was no way for us to go in and swap that file out. So, what we’d have to do is then we would have to transfer that file so the proofreader would let us know and say, “Hey, looks like the customer probably uploaded the wrong file. They said it was a resume and it’s a story. So then what we’d have to do is we contact the customer, and this is just one example. And then we get the correct from them, but then we didn’t have a way to get that file back into our system. So we just email it to the proofreader. Then they’d have to do it, and then once it was done from the first proofreader, it’d come back and then we’d have to tell the second proofreaders “Who wants this project?” And then we’d email it to them, because we just couldn’t get it back to the system. So we had to create a way for us to swap out files in the system. That’s just one little problem that we encountered. Other problems were we didn’t have a way to put projects on hold, or delete a project. So if a customer submitted a document and they told us, “Hold on, I accidentally updated uploaded the wrong file” We didn’t want to proofread or to accept that project and start working on it, But we didn’t have a way to put the project on hold. So, those are just two examples of lots of problems that we would encounter.

OWEN: You also mentioned during the pre-interview that time was an issue. So you didn’t even have time to document what you were doing. Explain that problem too.

BRIAN: Yeah. I was focused on all the different aspects of the business and I did not have time to really sit down and document everything that was in my head. So what I did is when it got overwhelming we finally hired our first employee. And I trained them, I spilled out what was in the head, put them in-charge of some certain, basic things. But they were also to start documenting that because they had more time. So they started the documentation process. They basically built the manual. Our employees have really helped build the manual.

OWEN: Wow. So you basically had them as part of their role to build the manual as they learned from you. The initial sets of employee as they learned from you what to do. And then you also mentioned during the pre-interview that you’ve created a system of—updating the procedures you had in place on an ongoing basis. Can you talk about that system you have?

BRIAN: Okay. Yeah, and we actually just did that recently. Well, first of all if I’m asked a question I always will then ask the customer service agent, whoever’s asking me the question. I’ll say, “Well, have you looked in the manual for the answer to that?” And then if they haven’t well then I’ll go and I’ll tell them what needs to happen here. Then I’ll tell them that needs to be added to the manual. So we’re always like– There’s still lots of things that are not in that manual that we’re encountering. But at least the way our culture is and the way we approach things is we try to get everything in the manual if it hasn’t been in there already. So, I don’t just usually answer questions for people I want them to consult the manual first. And sometimes maybe the manual’s a little vague on that. So we need to expand on that part of the manual. And then what we’ll do– that’s just one part, but then we always want to make the manual easier to read and understand and so we’ll have to follow the manual where a customer service agent, everything becomes a habit then you’ll have to consult a manual for a lot of their stuff they’re doing day in and day out. Well, I ask is, okay, everything you do this week, every situation you encounter, even if you’ve done it a hundred times, I want you to follow what the manual says exactly. What we’re looking for is there anything confusing there with the manual. I know you know how to do it but if we hired a brand new person and they were encountering this problem for the first time, is there anything with that situation that’s confusing or could be stated better, maybe we could have some more screenshots, things of that nature.

OWEN: Okay. You’re using the employees to self-correct the manual as they go.

BRIAN: Right.

OWEN: Okay. And then I’m curious given what you’ve said so far we can see it was a lot of effort on your part. But how did you stay committed to this new direction of systematizing your business given all the challenges?

BRIAN: Well, I think one was I was seeing the success of what the book E-Myth told me. I was seeing how that can actually work. And I really didn’t have any other choice. The business was just growing to a level that was way big for me to just handle all by myself. And I knew we couldn’t go backwards and what we were doing it was working. So, that’s pretty much why we stay committed to it, because we’re always tackling new projects and we have different people there at all different times. And they have to be able to quickly know how to handle a situation if I’m not there if someone else who might know that situation is not there. They have to be able to handle that situation. And so, are you saying like why are we committed to the manual?

OWEN: Oh, no. You kind of answered it because the reality is you have a team where you have a bunch of different contractors working for you and you want to make sure that the results deliver regardless of who is doing it really is predictable. So you had no choice but to stay true with it and just build a system regardless of whether there was a challenge or not. And I’m curious too, you mentioned how you guys on hand you have a system that you guys built to manage the workflow through the different steps. But then you also mentioned that you have a literal manual where people actually read step-by-step how things should get done. And I want to give readers insiders, to what those are in terms of the manual itself, what tools are you using for this?

BRIAN: Okay. So the manual is just a Microsoft Word document, and it’s very well organized. We have table of contents, it’s searchable. It’s broken down based on kind of the different things, processes that we have. And then we just use screenshots too, we use a lot of screenshots that would not only– we have texts that explains what to do. But we also have screenshots that show what to do. Does that answer the question that you’re–

OWEN: Oh, yeah. I was just trying to give the listener insiders to how– what you guys built to do the management of the procedures– go ahead.

BRIAN: I think the next step is right now I would prefer it not to be in a Microsoft Word manual going forward. I’d prefer it to be maybe like a wiki that’s on our server, so that people can even access it faster and we can start embedding video because I think some how to video would also be beneficial. We just haven’t gone around to getting it from Microsoft Word file on to a website. And I know that’s what you’re guys’ website does pretty much. That’s what it is.

OWEN: I’m fighting the urge not to talk about it, not to talk about us and this one. But the whole goal of this interview is to share with listeners how entrepreneurs like yourself have been able to systematize their business regardless of whether they use SweetProcess or not. Our goal is to make it easier to do. Moving on with the interview, I’m curious, when you track you build a system on one hand but you also have to be able to track the results that are being delivered to make sure that you’re getting what your customers desire. I’m curious, how do you track results being delivered by your employees?

BRIAN: Well, I still micromanage a little bit and I’m still CC-ed on every email. So that’s one way that I can see. The nice thing about being CC-ed on it is I can see what happened prior to that. And so I can correct maybe something that someone didn’t do. And I’m a real stickler for fundamentals. I want things done exactly how we do them. So that’s one way I can track that things are being handled. When I’m in the office, when they’re on the phone with other people, I can listen to how that conversation’s evolving, and make sure that they’re handling the situation the way we want. And we also have statistics on– that’s how I track our in-house people, we also have statistics that we keep on all of our outsource proofreaders.

OWEN: Okay.

BRIAN: We have benchmarks we want them to be hitting. We can track how many projects they’ve done in the last 30 days, 60 days, 120 days. How many words they’ve done in the last 30 days, 60 days, 120 days. We have a twilight statistics, we keep track of how many projects they’ve done between 9 pm and 9 am, because that’s an area we’re a little more weak at. And then we also keep track of the second proofreader’s half to give the first proofreader’s feedback based on how they thought the first proofreader did. We archive some really positive feedback, we archive positive with really negative feedback. We archive it as negative. And I can go and look in a proofreader and I can see are they trending way more negative feedbacks than positive feedbacks. We use that information to kind of help determine if we’re going to promote someone from first proofreader to second proofreader. And that’s another thing that systemize– there’s so many systems that we have in our system that I just can’t talk about in the interview, it’s just so much.

OWEN: And then you mentioned, how exactly does your sales manager track results? I think it manages and track sales. Explain that.

BRIAN: Right. We started working with our Sales Force about over a year and a half ago now. And then we’ve actually got Sales Force to integrate in with Outlook, and we’ve built processes out for, and it’s on the manual. If someone calls in and we give them a quote. Then that goes in to Sales Force as a lead. And then the email that were sent to them is visible in Sales Force, and so James, he can see all the opportunities that are currently out there. And then we have processes for, okay, so the next day if they haven’t sent their file to us yet for a large project, we follow-up and this is how we do it. And so Sales Force and Outlook, they coincide with each other. But we used Microsoft, we got hosted exchange through GoDaddy. ?Because we got sort of busy to where we needed to have 2 people on different computers and still be able to manage the customer service and sales. So the nice thing about that is basically like 2 Outlooks on 2 different computers but they sync with one another. So that’s nice too, so the customer service agent can easily see what’s going on in the sales account if they need to and vice versa.

OWEN: And you mentioned how exactly does sales manager reads over every sales, emails that goes out to makes sure that your employees following the process you have in place, can we talk about that?

BRIAN: Yeah, so I’ve kind of delegated the sales process to our sales manager. And what I want him to do, because he’s– like we’re available everyday, 8 am to 10 pm. So, he’s not always the one actually fielding the sales. So we trust our people who are there nights and weekends to be able to field an inbound lead and send out the appropriate quote. And so, James, he looks over all that information. He just makes sure that they’re doing it how they’re supposed to, and then if they’re not he’s in-charge of correcting that or making sure that they understand what it is they didn’t do correctly and how to do it correctly next time.

OWEN: Since your business now, to an extent, runs without you, I’m just curious, what’s been the longest time you’ve been away from the business?

BRIAN: Well, last April I did go to Germany for about 2 weeks. I guess I don’t think I’ve ever been away from the business 100%. But actually, I’ve been out of the office for a 2-week period and that was last April, and the business could basically run. I’d look at emails and things like that, but if I was gone and no one could even talk to me, and I couldn’t talk to them, the business would’ve been able to run without me. And then I went to Las Vegas and my in-laws down in Arizona over Christmas break and New Year’s, and again, the business was able to run. Now, I choose to not just totally unplug, but I probably could if I had to.

OWEN: And how will you even say the company has been transformed as a result of you systematizing the business?

BRIAN: Well, in the end the customer, they’re gaining a better experience. They’re getting more responsive customer service, more available customer service. I think we’re able to hire now, ramp up hiring a lot faster if we have to. We’re able to take on more volume of work. I think the quality has gotten better as far as putting the correct proofreaders on the correct projects. So, the business is just the main thing that’s happened is the business is producing a better product and service through the customer, and I’m not going to have a heart attack, or a nervous breakdown. I was probably trending that way 2 years ago.

OWEN: And so now that you have all system in place. I’m just curious, from a personal standpoint, how is your personal life been transformed as a result of systematizing business.

BRIAN: Well, more– I do have more of a social life, and I can go to bed, I don’t have to stay up till 2 in the morning sometimes. I don’t have to be up at 6 in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays so I could be at the office. And then be there until 10 at night. So certainly just more time at home. It certainly helped in that regard. And also, now I’m able to start focusing on more ways to generate sales.

OWEN: Okay.

BRIAN: My hands hurt–

3: That was about to be my next question saying now with all these focus, saying, now with all these focus, with all these free time, where do you focus with all these free time, where do you focus more of your time on, but go ahead.

BRIAN: So, what I’m focusing on now is I still project manage our website development and systems development. So I’m always doing new things in that regard and having our developers build that and testing. But also, we don’t do any outbound sales at all right now. All of our sales are fielding inbound leads. And so, while working on developing an outbound sales, system and process, and I’m going to be the one heading it up. And because that scenario I think we could really boost growth. Maybe 2 years ago I would’ve been too nervous about the fluidity of our systems to go out and contact bigger customers, but not we’ve got it build. And so now I’m comfortable going out, I’m confident that we can produce for a customer that might be spending 10, 15,000 a month in proofreading. So we need to go out and try to attract those clients.

OWEN: What I get from that is that right now what you’re currently doing is you’re focused on literally building this systems and improving upon them–  [Unintelligible 00:45:12] the words when you say working on the business instead of in the business is what you’re actually doing.

BRIAN: Basically yes, trying to get totally on working on the business. It’s been a slow growth to that corner. I’m not there yet by any means, I still work in the business a lot but way less than I did 2, 3 years ago, and that was a great– You’re pulling that from the E-Myth book.

OWEN: Yeah. That’s from the E-Myth. I heard you say you’re working on building a sales process to go out and land the larger clients only because you have a system in place that is predictable and can actually work based on the system. So if you applied larger clients and their workload into the system, the system should still be able to handle it.

BRIAN: Right, yup.

OWEN: Okay. And so, someone who’s been listening to this so far all the way to this point, what will you say is the first thing that they would have to do in order to get started with having a business as you can’t wrong without them, to systematize business, what’s the first thing that you think you should do?

BRIAN: Well, I think whatever you’re doing, whenever you’re doing yourself, that needs to be documented. What you’re doing and how you’re doing it. And if you’ve already outgrown that stage and you have an employee now. Think about what would happen if that employee left. You’ve got to train that other person to do everything again. And that takes  a lot of time. So I develop a manual that really can function as– it’s really a great training tool, that’s really a great way to save you tons of time explaining how things need to handled.  I would say is number one. That’s the most important thing to start systemizing anything.

OWEN: I’m curious, you’ve mentioned the E-Myth but I’m also wondering what are the books have you read and it that influences way of thinking and why?

BRIAN: Well, to be honest, this way of thinking, it’s weird. I own the business before right out of the college for 8 years, and I’d never though this way before. E-Myth, it’s scary that I can still not been doing this. But really, up until 3 years ago I was always thinking, I never had employees really. They were always part-time or seasonal. So I never really experienced the time [Unintelligible 00:48:05] it is to train someone new from scratch, starting to experience that the co-founder of ProofreadingPal, he’s just kind of hands-off, he’s more an investor-type. He told me to read E-Myth, and that’s really the only book I’ve read about processing, and it’s just been an excellent book.

OWEN: Awesome. And so, what’s the best way for the listener to reach out to you thank you for doing the interview?

BRIAN: Well, I’m on Facebook, Brian Kaldenberg, same thing on Twitter, and you can visit our website. It’s proofreadingpal.com, and you can call the 888 number, we’re still a small business, you can ask for Brian if you want to talk to me, and they’ll transfer you right over.

OWEN: And I’m curious, is there a question that you wish that I asked you during the interview that I didn’t ask you. And if so, post a question and the answer.

BRIAN: I think one of the other questions that I would have liked to answer would have been– you asked what most important thing is to get started, but how do you avoid that fear of getting started. I think a lot of people have that. And I think the approach that you need to take is– like Rome was not built in a day, and you just got to get started. And if you just start on 1 little thing, either documenting what you’re doing on that little thing, or one little thing that you could do in your business that you can change it to make it better. It doesn’t just happen overnight, you just got to constantly, slowly but surely, find things that can be improved and systemized. And eventually when you look back over the whole year, that’s when you really see the results of your efforts.

OWEN: And so, speaking to the listener, you’ve been listening all this time. So first of all, if you enjoy this interview so far I want you to leave a review for it, hopefully a 5 star review, and to sweetprocess.com/iTunes to leave a positive review. The reason to do that is we do leave a review other entrepreneurs will find this interview, and then also it encourages us to get more guests like Brian to come on here and literally give you a breakdown of their business, the process breakdown. And also, if you know another entrepreneur who find this interview useful, please share this interview with them, and finally, if you’re at that point in your business where you’re tired of being a bottleneck and you want to get everything out of your head into a procedure so everybody knows step-by-step how to do task in your business, sign-up for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess. Hey, thanks for Brian, thanks for doing the interview, I appreciate it.

BRIAN: Thanks for having me Owen, it’s been a pleasure.

OWEN: And we’re done.

BRIAN: Alright.