How to Turn Messy Problems into Opportunities

Yesterday, I met with our primary maintenance guy at one of our m3ridian properties. I'm trying to get a basic mailbox installed, since we'll be running a few addresses out of this place, but need it installed in brick. I have no idea how to do that.

He takes one look at the mailbox and the brick and says, "No problem."

I go over to the mailbox, and begin to try and figure out how I'm going to get this to him on the day he is going to do the work. I can't store it at the property. Can't hide it on the porch. Can't meet him on that day.

"I'll take that, that will save you from thinking through the logistics."

I am flooded with gratitude. The mental burden that was relieved, even for a problem so tiny, was much needed after a long day back to the office.

It's a good reminder that there is neverending opportunity found in helping people solve their issues. If you can step into their messes, you can instantly make life long customers.

Three things I remember around this:

Get Dirty

Lots and lots of clean money is found in dirty work. Don't be afraid to take on the ugliest of projects, if its something you can handle and do.

One of our values at tripleNERDscore is "We Step Into Messes". We take on a number of projects that no one will touch. One of the worst has been an ExpressionEngine upgrade that we did that had a LOAD of core hacks. This meant not only upgrading all of the existing functionality that we could see; it meant going through all of the custom functionality we COULDN'T see. Days of asking "What happened here?", "Why did they do this?", "How do we replace this?" lead to a very very happy client and a very clean project.

Ask Questions

Messes have reasons. Nothing gets messy without someone making a decision, conscious or unconscious, on what got them there.

"We needed it done quick." What lead to the need for the tight turnaround? Is this something you experience often?

"We just left the site as is for too many years." What were your barriers to upgrading? Who were the champions of the project throughout the years?

"I'm not sure the last guy knew what they were doing." What gave you that impression? What did the processes around communication look like?

Every bit of context gives you clues on how to best clean it up and keep it clean. It takes longer up front, but will save you loads of headaches in the long run.

Dig to the Core

One of the homes we were looking to buy for m3ridian looked decent on the outside. No direct issues, at least nothing that couldn't be dealt with. We walked in to the first floor, notices some bowing of the floor and some other issues with the walls. Again, nothing that we couldn't negotiate around.

Until we went to the basement.

See, it was raining quite a bit on that day. When we got to the basement, we nearly stepped into a foot of water. There was no drain that we could see, so the water just sat there. And it was just a foot or so away from some live exposed wires. Needless to say, we didn't explore the second floor.

If you want to know what the real issue is, you have to keep digging down deep. You have to get to the foundation of the problems in order to address it. Keep asking questions. Keep getting to the reasons behind the mess.