Small business can be boiled down to 2 basic ideas – no matter what biz you are in:
Can you solve problems ?
Can you make good decisions, even with incomplete information?
Coffee shops, Night clubs, Sports Leagues, software companies … you are constantly solving problems that are unique – “you’re never gonna believe what happened last night“ … – and also problems that are constant and consistent – ”we just don’t have enough people we can trust,“ or even who can show up to work on time….
I used to talk often about what I thought was a big issue that affected peoples ability to solve problems, and make good decisions:
Gym Towels.
I go to the gym a couple times a week. And of all the fancy equipment and highly skilled people at a gym (like personal trainers) there is some very low tech equipment at the gym as well … wooden poles, water fountains, and yes … gym towels.
I used to mention gym towels a lot around our sports league, because we would have this funny thing happen.
No matter what equipment or gear manager we would have, they always seemed to hyper focus on things that seems un-important… sometimes referred to as “bikeshedding.”
Small business is a bit of a paradox. Everything matters, and at the same time a few things matter way more than everything else. So you never want sweat the details, but you also never want to just totally ignore the details … the paradox.
There is just a ton of gear that you need to run an adult rec sports league: flags, cones, discs, bases, turface, (puddle pillows anyone?) kickballs, softballs, ump gear, ref gear, first aid gear …. on and on.
And yet … we would often find ourselves in a spot where a gear manager would be obsessing about the smallest things, a water bottle in lost and found, pens and pencils, and clipboards.
At certain points we would have dozens and dozens of clipboards in circulation, for all the paperwork, and sometimes waivers – until League Lab added electronic waivers – that we needed to accomplish things.
And of course some umpire would end up with 10 clipboards in their car trunk, or 3 gear bags, or some other weird thing, and a gear manager would freak out wandering around the office yelling: “why wont people return their clipboards !!!”
Clipboards … are gym towels. They are the cost of doing business. They are a low cost item, that you should really never run out of …
If you’ve ever provided “clickers” for a softball or kickball league … you may have seen this Gym Towel analogy up close…. you will ALWAYS lose clickers … its almost better to spend your time finding a source for quality, cheap clickers in bulk, then to spend your time worrying about who accidentally took home a clicker, or who has six clickers in their glove compartment … Jay !!
If you went to a restaurant and they were out of paper napkins, and you asked for a napkin, and the restaurant said “sorry no more napkins this month … we have exceeded our quota” … what would you think ?
We don’t like waste, and we definitely don’t like spending money and wasting money for no good reason … but there is such a thing as opportunity cost.
When a gear manager was sweating how many clipboards we had and calling and emailing refs and umps to ask if they had any clipboards, there was a simpler solution:
Buy more clipboards.
This is a “resource problem” – future problems will spin up because you simply don’t have enough of a key ingredient in your system.
Of course the number 1 ingredient is always staff and people, but lets stick with gym towels for today.
<If you’re just starting up a sports league, you might have an even more pressing resource ingredient problem: money!>
The main issue is never that gym towels or clipboards or pens or napkins or clickers are going to disappear, the issue is rather how are you going to respond when they DO disappear.
Do you construct a complicated system for tracking and managing clipboards, putting numbers on the back and logging who has them? Do you relentlessly call your staff, or send out angrily worded emails threating “harsh punishment” if people don’t bring back clickers.
Do you treat the clipboards as a often mis-understood canary in the coal mine filter like the famous “green M&M” story from rock and roll days, and say “I can’t trust this ump if they have 12 clipboards and 6 clickers in their car …. Vince !!
Pretty sure we tried all these at least once … or five times.
Have a system for iPads and cameras that people may need to check out.
Clickers, Clipboards …. ehhhh … buy more clickers, and worry about something important.
You think you have a communication problem, or even said simpler, a REMINDER problem.
If I just remind my umpires one more time, then surely they will remember to take that clicker out of their pocket. I will send emails and put up big signs and talk to them in person and, and, and ….
… and this will barely fix anything.
Companies can have EDUCATION problems, but there are very few important things that can be solved by just repeating or reminding someone about something over and over again … although there are likely many unimportant things that can be made slightly better by relentlessly bugging and reminding someone about something that barely or rarely matters …
They don’t call it Taco Thursday … they Call it Taco TUESDAY … because TUESDAY is easier to remember than Thursday … because it has better alliteration. If you want to remind someone about Taco TUESDAY, it better sound really good …
So … funny story….
I would often talk to gear managers about sweating the small stuff, as they were losing their mind about a 10 dollar bag or a 1.50$ clicker, and I would make the gym towel analogy … because I would once and a while accidentally walk out of the gym with a small white towel stuffed in my pocket.
Then my local gym finally sold to another local gym chain.
And they took over and added a whole bunch of new equipment and stuff and changed the whole gym around.
And they also …
Stop me if you see where this is going …
INSTITUED A WHOLE NEW SYSTEM OF NUMBERED GYM TOWELS BECAUSE THEY WERE LOSING TOO MANY GYM TOWELS !!!!
<I swear I came up with the gym towel analogy years before this all actually happened>
Apparently after taking over a gym that had been in the same location for like 20 years, and raising all the prices, and getting rid of all the classes …. they then turned their attention to …
Gym Towels.
They sent out emails, They put up signs. They created an entire system where you had to log out a gym towel and then return it when you left or you would get in big time trouble.
And I supposed it worked….
Because after a month of this “rigorous” program, they sent out another email saying that things had calmed down, so they were rescinding the “check out a gym towel” program.
Victory … a small’ish business finally gets a win … and solves a problem.
Sorta.
Interesting part to the story …
Right around the time of this extensive gym towel program, another change hits the new gym in the old location ….
They send out another email and announce …
That they were unable to come to an agreement with the landlord, and so the giant upstairs space that used to be for classes, that turned into a huge room with all kinds of new workout gear, is going to turn into …
Nothing. Its going to disappear.
They walled it off.
They lost about 30 -40% of the floor space in the gym, because they couldn’t reach a deal with the landlord.
Running a small business is hard. I have no idea what transpired, I have no clue how much money they wanted, if it was reasonable, and if the landlord was impossible to deal with. I don’t know any of these things.
Here is what I do know …
I don’t believe in coincidences. Remember when I said a few things matter WAAAAY more than everything else.
Well yeah … I would say losing the upstairs part of the gym would probably be one of those few things.
But at least they reduced the monthly membership to account for less machines and space and the fact that the gym was now much more crowded then it used to be …
LOL … just kidding that didn’t happen at all … they totally raised all the prices shortly after.
<They still do a pretty decent job even thought I am giving them a hard time here…>
But hey … you solved the gym towel problem …
Or did you?
You solved it by reminding people and restricting their ability to even use gym towels. You reminded them so much, that they had no choice but to comply.
But the real question any small business owner should ask themselves is … why do I have to remind people so much ?
Are they thieves? Are they dumb? Are they just bad at following directions?
Or maybe …
Does the system you have set up for them …. kinda suck?
Way back in the day, when ATM machines first became a thing, I had an interesting experience.
If you remember, there was a long string of events to get money out of an ATM machine at a place like a bank.
Put in your card, type in your code, ask for a certain dollar amount, get your money, get your card back.
This is a sequence of events.
But the sequence of events was actually wrong.
It was wrong because the key reason you go to an ATM machine, is to GET MONEY.
You don’t go to an ATM machine to use your debit card, you go to get CASH.
Once you get your cash, the main reason for going was done, so a lot of people just LEFT….
and … forgot to get their card out of the machine.
The machine would beep and buzz and try to REMIND you that you forgot your card, but a lot of times it was too late.
“That’s Crazy“ I would think. Nobody could really FORGET their ATM card…
… and then one day I totally forgot my ATM card.
I went in the bank, and talked to the assistant branch manager or whatever, and explained I think I might have left my ATM card in the machine …
“No problem” she said … and promptly walked me over to her desk, opened her drawer …
AND STARTED GOING THROUGH 15 DIFFERENT ATM CARDS …
until she found mine.
Apparently this was a consistent problem.
But what kind of problem ?
The designers probably thought at first that it was a REMINDER problem: “Don’t forget to grab your card !!”
Don’t forget to drop off your clipboards/ clickers/ gym towels / paperwork / donations … etc. etc. etc.
This is a SEQUENCING AND SETTING problem.
The sequence of the action was out of order … everything worked fine … it was the wrong sequencing.
Now … when you go to bank of america … you CAN’T GET YOUR MONEY unless you FIRST take your card back.
Taking the card, tells the machine to spit out the money.
If you want people to act like machines, and not like humans, you had better get your setup and sequencing right.
So lets go back to our gym towels…. and now think like a real small business owner, and not like every other business owner and sports league director.
What’s the real question you should be asking, to truly understand the problem?
Not how much to Towels cost … not how can I remind people more … not how STERNLY WORDED this email should be ….
The question you should ask … if you want people to drop off their gym towels … instead of accidentally walking out with them … is
Where is the drop-off … and what does it look like ?
What’s the sequence, and what’s the setting ?
Where do you drop off the gym towels? Not the same place you pick them up …
Is that good or bad. I’m not sure.
But a funny thing happened a month ago … a loooong time after the towel checkout system.
They moved the towel drop off bin, next to the front door.
The WHOLE time they had been relentlessly emailing members, and posting huge signs, the bin had been in a totally different spot, tucked away by the snack fridge, and disconnected from where you pick up the towels.
You want people to build a habit of dropping off their towels, check your sequence and your setting before you send out another email …
You want people to drop off their clickers and their clipboards? Their first aid kits? Their scoresheets, waivers, paperwork?
Where is the drop-off ?
Where the the front door ?
Where will they have to bump into or act on what you want them to do [Your SYSTEM], instead of REMEMBERING what you hope they will do … remembering your system?
In all of the problems that have vexed you for months if not years, these are the questions worth asking, because you are dealing with humans.
Once they get their cash, they forget about their card. The point was to get the cash.
Once they finish their workout, they forget about their towel, and start thinking about the reward they are going to give themselves for finishing the workout. A smoothie, a beer, a donut.
They are not thinking about STEALING a towel – at least I wasn’t – or stealing a clipboard, or stealing your time and causing YOU frustration.
They are definitely NEVER thinking about YOUR system … they are thinking about THEIR SYSTEM … aka their life and their priorities.
As a matter of fact … they probably weren’t thinking at all … they were probably listening to music, or a podcast, and telling themselves … I deserve a donut – should it have sprinkles? … because that’s how life normally goes …
And of course just as a final fun idea … look at the lettering on the towel bin.
TOWELS ONLY
Why does it say towels only – Because … it looks like a trash can.
It looks like another bin that looks exactly the same, that’s in a different area, that’s a trash can.
It looks like a trash can … because …
It is a trash can!
Maybe if you wanted people to drop off their towels, you could come up with a clear bin, that didn’t look like a trash can, that would show people that the bin was full of …
used towels.
This goes to another fun thought I have always had … if you want people to stop leaving stuff in TSA checkpoint bins when they go through the metal detector or whatever that thing is, why not make the bins clear ? Why are they always GREY !?!?
Wanna see it again ? Here are the two bins outside of the best coffee place in town:
One is trash … one is recycling….
Which one is which ?
I mean they are labeled … if you stop to read that tiny label … if you are thinking … which most of the time people are not … that’s why they drink so much coffee.
I don’t mean to nitpick – I’m sure any small business owner could find 10 things about League Lab in 5 minutes that are really dumb and make no sense. If you are running a small business, as an entrepreneur, you will never run out of problems to fix. I still go to my gym, even though they drive me crazy sometimes. They do a good job, and this place does make the best coffee in town – which should be the focus.
Yet hopefully you can see that whether you are running a gym, a coffee shop, or an adult recreational sports league, you might want to spend less time yelling and reminding people to try and fix problems, and more time focused on the setting, the setup, and the sequence of your system… which is often what creates a problem in the first place !
Where is the drop off bin? When do you give the ATM card back? What color is the recycling can? Is it the same color as the garbage can? Why?
But hey enough about these towels and garbage cans … I have a sports league to run. I’m not in the gym business, I’m in the adult rec sports league business. I need to go work a kickball game with a new umpire …
Now … where did I put that clicker …