Week 4 at Sunright — Drinking from a firehose

At MIT, the metaphor “drinking from a fire hose” is often used to describe the velocity and volume of coursework for undergrads. This week, I started drinking from a fire hose at Sunright.

Last Saturday, my dad started his two week trip in China. My mom and him are taking a cruise with my mom’s side of the family. So barely 3 weeks into the job, I’m taking over the helm of the ship for a few weeks. I’m glad that they’re able to take some time off. This is a big reason why I decided to come back to Atlanta to help them.

One important lesson I learned from my Gojee days is that there’s no such thing as preparedness in entrepreneurship. Worrying about not being prepared enough is like complaining that a hurricane is coming. There’s nothing you can do about it.

Instead of spending the energy and brainpower on worrying, save it and use it to improvise as challenges come up. The week did require a lot of improvisation, since I became the first and often last line of defense on issue.

Sunday 11/5

• Review product margins and set margin goals for every transaction
• Prepare questions for weekly leadership and sales meetings

Finally got around to reviewing some financial information. I started off by reviewing margins for our products. This was triggered by our sales team asking for more flexibility on determining deal prices. They suggested knowing the margins of our products would be able to help. After reviewing the margins, I came away with two thoughts. 1. Giving them margin information and target isn’t going to be enough. We need an entire process to guide them. 2. Our margins are awefully thin on some products. After warranty, after-service costs are factored in, I wonder if we’re really making any money at all.

Saturday 11/4

• Communicate Helmet Specs to BSR
• Sign and Return 999–82287671 PDX Claim CL067–17
• Sign non-compete contract with new supplier
• Talk with potential intern for Sunright
• Review Project Shine contract

After looking at my new priority list and seeing that there are a lot of bolded todos left, I knew it was going to be a working weekend. I finally got the time to edit the helmet manufacturing suggestions that I collected from my first week to the factory.

I was most excited about an hour-long call with a friend’s younger brother. He’s currently at MIT and is taking a gap year to get work experience and get a better sense of what he enjoys. He was interested in interning at Sunright. After talking with him, I could tell he was smart, extremely motivated, and had a huge motor. I wanted to have him be at Sunright. So we agreed that starting in the new year, he’ll come to Atlanta and work here for three months.

Friday 11/3

• J&L Meter resolution
• Count inventory for ATV, UTV, Scooter with Kevin
• Transfer large fund from one bank account to another
• Review parts list with Tech Support department to see what we need from our vendors
• Send MSO & Invoice to Keels and Wheels for iTango
• Email Project M term sheet
• Update weekly finance, sales dashboards, and weekly leadership notes

With todos coming in from many directions, I reformatted my todo list to keep things organized. As I get todos, I add them to a Google Doc that I maintain, they’re assigned into buckets according to internal function needs or vendor conversations. At this point, a backlog is forming, and so I highlight the important and urgent ones, so I know what to work on next.

While many parts of Sunright require attention, our parts department require special attention. I heard that we have quite a few back ordered parts and our dealers frequently have a hard time reaching our team. When I wanted to verify whether or not that’s true I couldn’t. It turns out, we don’t track our customer issues any where, so it’s all based on memory and reacting to inbound calls. Proper customer service and parts support is critical to brand loyalty and dealer retention. Our current VP overseeing the area, isn’t in the best health and often isn’t in the office. As a result, I decided to take on an active management role to help setup establish some process and systems.

To start, I got the team together to make sure the back ordered parts they need will get to us soon. The team of two had individually sent requests to my dad. Knowing how busy my dad is, I asked them to get the information into one sheet so he can more easily track what he needs to do. After reviewing the information, I realized they were only order what we needed and not ordering for stock, so we modified the orders and sent it off.

Thursday 11/2

• Add crate dimensions to inventory sheet
• Talk with Keels and Wheels about electric boat, scooters
• Talk with new supplier about MSO and feedback from shipment
• Talk to Dad about getting parts in China

The sales team usually always has a request for how to make their job easier. One recent suggestion they had was to allow themselves to get freight quotes to speed up the sales closing process. In sales, once a customer says they want to buy, then getting a response back to them quickly can really help with closing the deal. So this suggestion made sense.

I also talked with a dealer who came by to pick up a seat for our Golf Cart. While he was walking by, he noticed one of the electric scooters and wanted to try it out. While it was only a demo unit, I decided to sell it to him anyways to get some early customer feedback.

I also talked with one of our new suppliers about resolving some issues related to the new UTVs we received from them yesterday. Some critical logistical questions weren’t answered when we decided to start buying from them. We didn’t resolve our issues completely. This made me realize two things: 1. we need a better process for ensuring new products have proper after sale support. 2. this new supplier adds a new layer of complexity to after sales support, and we will need to spend some time to figure out how to work together.

Wednesday 11/1

• Help unload truckload of UTVs and Minibikes
• MSO issue continued
• Send parts packages
• Deposit money into WFC
• Learn about flooring rates
• Listen to employees feedback at the end of the day

Today, I did a few things that I normally wouldn’t have had to do if my mom and my dad were around. The hard and boring work they put in each and everyday became more real. Making trips to the bank, post office. Unloading products from a semi.

At the end of the day, one of the employees walked by my desk and gave me his two cents. He touched on people and the processes (or the lack thereof) at the company. He suggested challenging our VP to document his knowledge so others can help. It was a really good point.

Tuesday 10/31

• Weekly sales meeting
• Learned that there is an issue with MCOs
• Help with setting up freight access for sales reps
• Filled out term sheet for Project M
• Phone call with Dad to discuss Project M updates
• Phone call with a college friend and learned that her brother might be interested in interning at Sunright. I jumped at the opportunity.
• Send packages at USPS

Flew into Atlanta on the 6AM flight and got into the office bright and early. For the next couple of weeks, I’m leading up the entire office.

First thing on the agenda, the weekly sales meeting. It didn’t go well. Last week, I’d asked our Director of Sales to run the meeting. During the meeting it was clear he hadn’t prepared for it at all. There was no structure or even prepared content for the meeting. Afterwards, I tried to talk to him to assess what happened . I realized that it was a combination of bandwidth, motivation and capability. This employee was already doing marketing emails, sales, and dealer support calls. He doesn’t have a lot of time left in his day. He also felt that while he has the title Director, he isn’t paid accordingly so he shouldn’t take on all of the responsibilities. It turns out he doesn’t have any experience in sales management, so executing this isn’t as simple as putting in a little bit of time either. My conclusion after the discussion is in the short-term I’ll have to take on the management workload. In the medium to long-term, we have to find a way to either properly motivate and train the employee to take on additional responsibilities or hire a real manager.

Monday 10/30

• Weekly leadership meeting
• Meeting with Paul to discuss terms for Project M

Today is my last day in New York. Besides running the weekly leadership meeting remotely, I had a lunch meeting with the head of licensing for Project M. He was previously the CEO of several public companies. We sat down, got to know each other, and then talked about how we can work together. We both walked away from the lunch excited about the prospects of the partnership.