TRIC Lessons - 2018
It is always a little awkward having to explain to people that I’m the founder of some really niche meme page that is a household name within its target audience, but it’s usually met with some adulation and confusion. This guy runs TRIC? But Wayne is so… Well, he doesn’t seem like a self-styled memelord, but here we are. Anyways, it has been an an overall positive experience.
The much more awkward part of TRIC is running the business that me and some of the other long-time staff members created from it. None of us have any experience in private sector management and we’ve had a few growing pains in the past year we’ve started this new leg of our adventure. It turns out there is a hell of a lot the Navy doesn’t teach you.
So, I’m going to catalogue the architecture of TRIC L.L.C. and some of the challenges we’ve ran in to this year for a few different reasons.
First of all, I want to be as transparent as possible with you guys. We’re not trying to build up TRIC to be like all of these other heartless brands trying to exploit the group identification you (and we) belong to; we’re here first and foremost to provide entertainment and support to you guys. This business part is a fun side project that pays for Christmas presents and a few miscellaneous expenses every now and then, but there’s no way we’re going to compromise our page’s “integrity” to make a couple extra hundred bucks every quarter.
Secondly, I wanted to give the rest of you kinda-sorta-thinking-about-it entrepreneurs a peak into what it’s like starting a small retail business and the unexpected hurdles we’ve faced so far. It’s pretty obvious stuff looking back on it, but it was real easy to overlook everything in the moment.
Finally, I’m just doing this because I’m proud of this baby of mine. Being a part of TRIC is one of the most satisfying things I’ve got to do with my life so far. It seems a little cheesy, but there’s something pretty touching about getting to make a few thousand people chuckle every day and, occasionally, providing some serious help to those who need it. On top of this, I get to experience management from a perspective the Navy could never offer me and learn lessons first-hand without the risk of spiraling into poverty if I screw up. So, thank you guys for giving me this opportunity. I’m trying to make the best of it.
Without further ado, let’s get into it. Here are my top 3 lessons learned from running TRIC L.L.C. in 2018.
Lesson One:
You cannot comply with a procedure that has not been written.
We have a lot of moving parts. Unlike a consultant business or an engineering firm, our day-to-day operations consist of a lot of small, mundane tasks instead of more grandiose thinking-oriented projects. There’s a lot of work split up over a lot of tiny steps to get a product from our storeroom to your hands:
1. We get a new batch of inventory in after a few weeks (months) of design and production with a vendor.
2. We catalog every piece of the inventory to ensure we got what we paid for and then put up the product for sale on our website.
3. You see an ad, head over to our website, and then place the order.
4. We transfer your order details into a spreadsheet tracker (payment information redacted)
5. Andy prints a copy of your order invoice and packs up your order according to the invoice
6. Andy verifies the address you put on the website to ensure we do not get a returned package by mistake, and then emails you if something is wrong
7. Andy prints the shipping labels for your order, puts it on to the box, and schedules it to be picked up for shipping
8. Andy updates the spreadsheet and website tracker, and another member verifies this is all done correctly
9. You get the order barring an error with USPS
None of these steps are hard and any person reading this could do it. After all, procedural compliance is the name of the game for nukes, right? Why do you even need a procedure? Fulfilling an order is pretty simple stuff.
You’re exactly right. It is because it is so simple that we must ensure that it is done correctly; it is easy to fall into a cognitive blindspot because you’re not paying attention. Any tiny error in any of these steps and that order will not reach its intended destination or, even if it does, it will not be filled correctly. This is something we had to learn the hard way in Quarter 3 of this year. Andy filled out orders with exceeding accuracy- easily around 95%.
But 5% of 1000 orders or so is still 50 errors that we have to fix. And that costs us money. Shipping is already really expensive; having to do it twice puts a significant burden on a company where all of the product is shipped by one guy and the bank account itself. We can’t deal with 5% error.
So, what did we do? We took a few lessons from the Navy. Do things in the same order every time. Read from the paper (in this case, invoice) to ensure you’re not working off your faulty human memory. Don’t mark anything as being done that hasn’t been completed from start to finish. These small changes reduced our error frequency to zero percent over the past three months. The required steps seem obvious now, but it’s easy to miss each and every one of them if you don’t have a specific procedure to follow.
We just had to write the procedure first.
Lesson Two:
Structure is both entirely unnatural and entirely necessary.
Picture this. You’re in a room with a bunch of your friends and you guys decide to do something together. It would feel awkward if one guy stood up in front of everyone and started delegating people to do certain components of this task- after all, we’re all adults, right? We can handle ourselves. Furthermore, what business does this guy have with ordering us around? We’re all friends here. This line of thinking is really easy to empathize with and, I think, the natural enemy of modern human organizations.
The Navy is great at providing structure. You know who is in charge of what at any given time and, if there are any issues, you know who to bring them up to. There’s always someone higher on the totem pole (or at least at the same rung) that knows what should be going on.
That is not the case in a fledging business of a handful of people. Not at all.
People have to know what their jobs entail and, more importantly, be kept to fulfilling their responsibilities consistently. I’m not saying people working with me at TRIC need to be treated like children who I need to monitor like some officer from NR all the time. That couldn’t be further from the truth. However, I have to acknowledge that we humans are pretty damn faulty.
We forget details. We forget some tasks entirely. We even mis-remember certain details and do something wrong we thought we were doing completely right! People can be acting in perfectly good faith and still mess things up. Human error is unavoidable. The only way to combat it is by engineering an environment where it can be detected and prevented.
This is where organizational structure comes in. There has to be someone and/or something to keep a group on task and proceeding in the correct way. For TRIC, that position has defaulted to yours truly.
Now, I’ve always been a “take charge” kind of person. When I was young, I ran internet web forums for fan communities of media I liked. I architectured and ran a team building platform for a popular video game for a couple of years. I’ve happily taken on leadership opportunities in the Navy because that’s the kind of person I like to be. I like being in management, but it’s become very clear to me lately that it is far more difficult and awkward to exert authority in a fledgling structure than it is in an organization where the roles are already well defined. It’s easy to tell your nub to do something when you have years of seniority over them- it’s not nearly as easy to issue a task to people who are both senior to you in age and time in the service.
We have a medically retired chief in his thirties, a former 10-year MMN1 that now works for Facebook, an active duty member who has been in the Navy for about 7 years and then, finally, there’s me. I’m not going to get into my history with the Navy here because I’m still active duty, but I am the youngest both by age and amount of years in the service.
And I’m the de-facto shotcaller for this entire thing. Woefully unqualified is a bit of understatement. I’ve barely held a job outside of the Navy, people.
But, as with the previous lesson here, I have learned the hard way that someone has to be the organizer of a group with this many moving parts. Someone has to write down all the tasks that need to be done, assign them deadlines, and then check they’re being done by the assigned individuals. You need spreadsheets and policies and multiple layers of bureaucracy to ensure that work is being done in a relatively efficient manner.
Without structure, you’re lucky if anything ever gets done.
And so for the future business owner reading this (or future JO), please don’t be afraid to really step in to your role as a managerial executive. It will feel awkward, but you can be in charge of something without acting like you’re better than the people you’re working with. This brings me to my third and final point (because this post is long enough as is):
Lesson Three:
Communication is an active process.
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind, but that does not mean I am good at communication. In fact, I would say I have been absolutely horrible at communication for most my adult life. Communication is the process of letting someone else know your thoughts and, as much as I hate to admit it, it really does matter how to say it.
I have what you could call “an abrasive personality”. I use big words to explain simple things and I often think I’m one of the smarter people in the room. Oh, and I’m an extrovert, so this just amplifies the grating nature of my communication because I don’t know when to just shut the hell up sometimes. (Sound familiar, you fucking nukes?)
We’re at an impasse here. I need to communicate with people to get the job done but I have to do so in a way that makes them want to actually comply with what I’m asking of them. I have to make sure I am being crystal clear with my intentions without sounding condescending. For some of you reading this, this entire process is natural and second-nature. That is most definitely not the case with me.
You know how I’ve spent over 2/3rds of this post talking about how important procedures and organizational structure is? It turns out none of that stuff matters if people are either not understanding why you are implementing certain systems, or they honestly just don’t like you and don’t care anyways. Effective communication is paramount and something I am still struggling with. However, I have found a few thumb rules to make it easier:
1. Never assume that someone else knows your intentions or processes. If you haven’t spoken to them directly about it, then assume they haven’t heard about it unless they tell you otherwise.
2. Just because you are overseeing the execution of the task does not mean you know how to do the task. Ask questions first, assign blame last.
3. Write down what you are going to send off in a different program (like word or notepad) before actually sending it. Read it back to yourself and then ask yourself “do I sound like a douche?”
4. Always take the blame whenever you can. It’s your fault for not being more clear or judicious in your oversight when an error occurs; fix yourself before you start trying to fix others.
And… that’s all I’ve got for you guys. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a message on Facebook or just comment on something. I’ll see it and respond. Thank you to anyone who has read this far. I’m so grateful that I get to be apart of this community in such a unique way; you guys make all the headaches, both in and outside the Navy and this business, worth it.
-Wayne