The work has often already been done.

All right, kind of excited for today.

Yesterday, we were discussing a particular problem that arose out of my wife's Airbnb, or really my Airbnb and my wife's Airbnb, but she manages it.

And there was a situation where our cleaner didn't do one of the tasks, essentially, the outside of the building didn't get dealt with.

And so when we came down, and the guests were about to arrive, probably in about four hours, so there's enough time wasn't a big deal was like, Oh, hang on, none of this has been dealt with.

And I was discussing the options for my wife to take responsibility or to do nothing, or how to deal with this.

So our cleanup was there yesterday.

And I was like, Hey, how do you know what to do? How do you make sure that you do this job? And it came out that my wife had just explained the work and said, Hey, do this and do that and clean this and clean that? And she was like, yep, that's how I do it.

And what came out was that there is no checklist, there is no documentation, there is no way of saying, Yep, it all got done.

And what was really interesting was a particular comment that she made that was, I often have to remember what we're running low on to text Emma to get her to get more.

So just one of the issues is that, hey, where are the supplies? That where's the toilet paper at? Where's the Weet-Bix? At? Where's the whatever the dishwashing tablets, like all of these consumables that go into that Airbnb, and there is just kind of a random thought process around Oh, wow, we're really low on dishwashing, or we're low on garbage bags, whatever that is, there's no systematic way of going through and making sure that all of those things have been dealt with.

And if they're low, well, first of all, what's that number where they're low? So that, not last minute, go? Oh, my goodness, that was the last dishwasher tablet that was the last toilet paper roll.

That was the last whatever.

And now there is a time challenge that we've got a recovered that next, that next supplies in a set time versus if it was like, okay, when the toilet paper gets to five, or when the dishwasher tablets get to 10 or whatever the item is the WeetBix get down to five, that's the trigger to say, hey, we've got three days to get that next set of supplies.

None of that is dealt with.

So I chatted with her.

And I was like, Look, would it help to have some of this stuff written down? And then she said a wonderful thing.

She said, Oh, the last job that I worked at, had a laminated checklist.

And I was like, great.

How about that? How similar Do you think most Airbnb cleaning jobs up? Like within 80% Let's go with Pareto Principle 80% of it's going to be the same.

You know, like there's going to be the cleaning of the kitchen and the cleaning making the beds and the vacuuming the floors and the mop this and check the dishwasher and cleaned the barbecue.

And all of these things are very similar between every Airbnb, pretty much on the planet, unless you're in the houseboat or unless you're in the tent or the caravan, whatever, fine.

But if it's an actual house, or a cottage or flat or whatever, there are these tasks that have to be done.

And she's like, I already got one.

My Yeah, nice.

That's great.

Could you bring along and she's like, yes?

Now what I want you to notice, though, is that this is a laminated checklist.

Now, what's the advantage of a laminated checklist? The advantage is, hey, it's super durable.

This thing's going to survive pretty well, you could tick it off, and know that the things have been done and then rub it out the next day, you're good to go.

What's the downside? The downside is that if there are changes to the protocol, then you've got to remember it.

You've got to remember it and go Oh, actually, I know it's written like that on the laminated thing.

But that's out of date.

And now you've got a trust problem.

What do you trust? Do you trust your memory? Do you trust the checklist of Dia so there's a downside to locking away a document that could potentially have changed? And you might argue and say, Look, you know, Airbnb, the chances of changing a pretty small, which is fine, but if you've got to do that, then we at least need enough repetitions of the cleaning process to go okay, we now have this reasonable really clear that this is the protocol and then fine, you could go along and laminate it with a caveat that says, hey, if something significant changes, we've got to redo the laminate.

And that could be a message at the bottom.

Otherwise, you've got that problem.

Oh, actually, line three is not cleaned the bed because we got rid of the single bed, we put in a double.

And that means it changed or something like that's not a great example.

But perhaps you get the idea that as things change, they need to be dealt with.

The second issue was how do we deal with irregular jobs.

And this was a really interesting thing, like, because those He regular jobs make a big difference.

I'm talking about something like say cleaning the fans.

Now, either you do it every time it changes over.

But probably that's a bit much, you know, probably that is a waste of money in terms of spending time doing some of these jobs that only need to be done on a more extended schedule, then every time it changes over, how did they get remembered.

And this led to a second idea is like, Okay, well, when are these jobs going to get done.

So it's like maybe on the first of the month, or the first clean after the first of the month, do all these monthly tasks, and the same with the quarterly tasks.

But this also should be documented perhaps on a second sheet.

And then the last thing that came out of it was like, Okay, what about these supplies? How do we get that out of every time it gets cleaned, there's at least a review of these things like where's the dishwasher tablets, where even wineglasses then things that get broken? Like all of these things, the more that this is taken out of someone's head, and actually documented the cleaner, the end result will be remember yesterday's experience was that variable results or a consistent outcome.

And that if I had these three documents, three, three documents, one with the regular clean that gets done every time there's a cleanup.

Secondly, one with the irregular ones with the schedule for it, hey, the first time we clean after the first month clean the fans.

And then third, the checklist for the supplies.

What do you think would happen to the quality of the cleans? What do you think the chances will be that we have major difficulties, they would in likely high probability decrease because the system is now in place.

Now wants you to remember that this is a physical space, this is something that can be interacted with relatively easily, that there's a lot of physical clues about what has to be done.

Like the beds not made, the bed has to be made the kitchens dirty, the kitchen has to be cleaned.

As you morph into a lot of the work that many of us are doing these days, which is online, there are far fewer reminders about this, what works needs, what work needs to be done.

And that makes the risk of missing things higher.

And that means the risk of having chaotic interactions with people because things got forgotten, becomes much higher.

This is not a cleaning job.

Like if you're running a multimillion-dollar business.

Guess what you got a lot of moving parts, a lot of moving parts.

But the problem that showed up in Airbnb is being played out across the board with your business.

And the cool thing is that this doesn't show up on day one, this doesn't even show up for a while you got to be good enough in your business to get to a stage where you can even have this problem.

That to me is one of the beauties of this like it takes a while before you go, Oh my goodness, we need systems and we need procedures.

Why is this whole business falling apart when it was growing so well and then it hit this inflection point and suddenly chaos and expenses start going up but profit comes down.

And at that point, if you have not thought about systems and processes, then your life becomes about managing people.

And that particularly has a high risk of one thing and that is chaos.

Things are not done to spec things are not done the same each time.

And suddenly as the strain of growth comes on, and more people get added to the mix.

It becomes more difficult because the work seems to increase.

You got all of these moving parts.

It's like well, we're not coping.

We're not coping here.

We've got this happening in this happening let's hire someone else.

But remember that if you have a people problem put more people into a people problem is not going to make it better, at best, you are going to get a period of sweet spot where you can get them to work.

And then after that, they will degrade to what is going on across the whole business.

And if you don't work out how to resolve this, then you are going to live a very stressful life.

It's going to be like, Whoa, man, I am working so hard for so little, what happened to my dream.

But I want to bring one thing to your attention, and that the entrepreneur’s role is to build systems and processes at some level for other people to do it.

But if you don't do that, and it doesn't arise for a while, and you've forgotten about this part, then it gets really tricky.

Because if you stop and start documenting and you don't know what you're doing, then all of that effort is highly likely to be wasted.

This will not be the first time that someone's gone along and say write down everything you do will put it in a Google Doc, and then it never gets used again.

And you should contemplate one question.

Why doesn't it get used? All of that effort went in, and yet it does not get used.

Alright, that's all I got for you today.

Thanks for tuning in.

Hope you enjoy the Airbnb analogy.

I'm excited to have these three documents created.

I think my cleaner actually was kind of looking forward to it as well.

So I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for tuning in.

Look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode of this exploration of systems and processes.

See you then.