Living the Dream: Danielle Rosellison

Eight years into this and I’m working seven days a week again. WTF? Seriously? It’s literally Sunday afternoon as I write this, and I’ve been sitting at my computer since 6 a.m. doing nothing except Trail Blazin’. It’s a good thing this is a labor of love.

Rather than whine and complain (which I’m totally aware is how I started this article), my focus is on how to put forward best practices, working ON the business as I’m working IN the business. It’s a good thing I’m an overachieving multi-tasker and efficiency is my personality type!

But how, pray tell, does one do this?

Since I have to cover for a lack of team members, I am timing everything I am doing while working IN the business. That way, I can use those numbers to work ON the business, transferring them to spreadsheets that calculate our exact price-per-gram, per-strain, per-room and per-SKU. This is beneficial for several reasons. Since COVID, prices for everything have gone up, including labor. Revisiting all those spreadsheets annually with current costs is critical.

Furthermore, let’s be honest: If the boss can make 2,000 joints in seven hours, and she hasn’t touched a Knockbox for over a year, asking team members to do 1,800 joints in eight hours is totally appropriate.

I’ve also been dying to get our standard operating procedures on video, which for some reason has been painfully slow in happening. We already write out our SOPs and put them into picture templates, but videos are a better tool for certain learners. Thus, as I’m working IN the business, I’m videoing my work with my fancy-dancy iPhone 7 (I know you’re jealous). Using iMovie to quickly edit, I’m able to pump out SOP videos so there are NO QUESTIONS about what hand you should use to do what (obviously opposite if you’re left-handed), how the movements should coincide, exactly how to set up your workstation and how long it should take you. The goal is to create a seamless training system and never again say, “What are you doing?”

Furthermore, there is no better way to improve processes than to actually do them and think, “Man, this would be way better/easier/faster if we had a [fill in the blank]” or “if we did it like this, it would go much smoother.” If a quick Google search doesn’t provide some results immediately, a talk-to-text into the notes section of your phone can remind you to look into it later (like on the weekend).

Last but not least, as our team members are struggling with a lack of co-workers or whatever, having the boss scrubbed-up beside them, sharing the workload, cleaning bathrooms and helping them meet their daily tasks boosts morale more than anything else we can do.

Ultimately, there aren’t enough hours during the “normal” work week to do everything. Certain things just have to be done in relative silence as we deep dive into big-picture projects (when I say relative, I mean as your kids are vying for your attention saying “mom, mom, mom, mom” or standing next to you just because they want to be close to you, but we’re all used to this since COVID, so I consider this “silence”). Making the most of the workdays, as the boss, can help us not feel so overwhelmed during this phase of the journey.