Everyday Business Problems

the Crysler Club
  • 4.9 (16)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

When it comes to your business, you know everything – except what you don't. Hosted by David Crysler, each episode we dive into finding and solving everyday business problems. Learn from business leaders and subject matter experts about the challenges they've overcome, and the challenges they still face. Join us for fresh insights, real talk, and inspiration to grow your business!

  1. 1d ago

    I Built a 6S Tool. The Tool Won't Save Your Program.

    Dave Crysler has walked nearly a hundred plant floors over the last 30 years, and most of them have the ghost of a dead 5S program somewhere: faded tape outlines, a shadow board missing half its tools, an audit sheet nobody has touched in years. In this episode, he breaks down why these programs die at the Sustain step and why the failure has almost nothing to do with your team's discipline. Both the consultants selling cleanup blitzes and the software vendors selling audit apps are treating the symptom, and Dave is willing to say so from inside the industry, as someone who just built a 6S audit tool himself. What You'll Discover: • Why nobody ever calls a consultant about a failed cleanup, and what that says about where programs actually die • How 5S gets sold as a project, and why the Sustain step is out of scope before the kickoff even happens • Why the blitz is billable and the sustain isn't, straight from a consultant willing to say it plainly • The real reason the messy floor keeps coming back: a missing rhythm, not missing discipline • How Sort, Straighten, and Shine create clarity, Standardize creates consistency, and Sustain is the accountability step • The hot-job-versus-audit moment, and what leadership's choice signals to the entire floor • How surfaced gaps that die going up the chain erode trust one finding at a time • Why culture is the output of a running system, not the input, and what people need to see before they start believing • What to do Monday morning, whether your program is dead, dying, or hasn't started yet If there's faded floor tape somewhere in your building, this episode is the honest autopsy and the restart plan. Start with one work center, build the audit rhythm before you expand anywhere, and give your team a reason to believe that raising their hand matters.

  2. Jul 21

    Your Exit Multiple Is Being Written Right Now

    Dave Crysler unpacks what really determines the price of a business at exit, drawing on years spent on the buyer's side of acquisitions. Two owners with the same earnings can sell for wildly different numbers, and the difference has nothing to do with product, customers, or market. It comes down to whether the business runs without the owner, and buyers price that risk before the offer ever hits the table. What You'll Discover: • Why the risk in your business gets priced in before you ever see an offer • What buyers are really looking for beyond your financials, and why the shop floor tells them more than the books • How earn-out deals actually work, and why they turn owners into employees chasing targets they no longer control • The moment most owners first realize their infrastructure is not as strong as they thought • Why hiring a right-hand person relocates owner dependency instead of solving it • The fire drill exercise that shows you exactly what routes through you, and how strong your team really is • Why you can't reconfigure and systemize an entire business in six months, no matter what someone promises • How Planning, People, Process, and Technology, in that order, build a business that runs by design instead of by default • Why the same work applies whether you sell, hand it to the next generation, build an ESOP, or keep it 30 years If everything in your business routes through you, that's not just a stress problem, it's a valuation problem. This episode shows you how to see your operation the way a buyer will, and why the sooner you start systemizing by design, the faster the multiple grows.

  3. Jul 15

    Your Team Isn't Resisting Change. They Stopped Believing You.

    A client of Dave's had an incredible first quarter, then one of the worst months on their recent record. In this episode, Dave Crysler breaks down what almost always happens the week after a bad month: the panic pivot, where leadership changes everything at once and calls it decisiveness. He unpacks why changing too many things simultaneously destroys your baseline, why constant course corrections read as fear to your team, and how the flavor of the month cycle quietly erodes trust until your best people stop investing effort in any initiative at all. What You'll Discover: • Why the reaction to a bad month is almost always a total shift, and why that instinct is so hard to resist • The difference between feeling decisive and actually being strategic when results disappoint • Why changing too many things at once means you never establish a baseline, and never learn which changes move the needle • How constant pivots create whiplash inside your business, and what that does to trust over time • The real reason leadership teams overreact: measuring the business through lagging indicators that report what already happened • How leading indicators give you a peek into the future, including how Dave knew where the month would land two weeks in when he ran manufacturing operations • The rule for when a change is actually justified: materially new information versus simply reacting to a miss • Why most bad months call for taking a breath and staying the course, and how the 80/20 rule applies • What's really at risk with every strategic pivot: the trust you've built across your organization If you just closed out a rough month or a soft first half, this episode is the pause button. Before you change everything, figure out what the numbers underneath the numbers are telling you. That's the difference between a leadership team that learns and one that starts over every quarter.

  4. Jul 7

    Why Chasing Efficiency Keeps You Stuck

    Every operator says they want to be more efficient, and Dave Crysler argues that's exactly the wrong goal. In this solo episode he unpacks the one-word distinction that quietly holds most operations back, the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and why nearly 30 years on the shop floor taught him that the two are not the same thing. He walks through why the localized efficiency we're all trained to chase can look like progress on the inside while the customer never feels a thing, and shares a recent custom manufacturing client that cut lead times from 30 to 45 days down to 5 to 10, with no additional resources. What You'll Discover: • Why the word efficiency may be the reason your operation stays stuck • The difference between efficiency, utilization, and effectiveness, in plain language • How chasing efficiency inside every department quietly sabotages the whole system • The rowing team analogy that makes effectiveness click in ten seconds • Why increasing flow means some parts of your business should be less efficient on purpose • How a custom manufacturer cut lead times from 30 to 45 days down to 5 to 10 with the same, and eventually fewer, resources • The teeter totter effect, why fixing one bottleneck just moves the constraint somewhere else • Why buying scheduling software almost never fixes a scheduling problem • The real cost of solving at the symptom level, in margin and in cash If your team feels busy but the numbers won't move, you're probably measuring the wrong thing. Start by looking at where the work actually waits, not at how busy everyone is. That's where your next real gain is hiding, and it usually doesn't cost a dime.

  5. Jun 30

    Same Problems, Different Day. Here's Why.

    Every business is already running on a system. The only question is whether anybody actually designed it. In this solo episode, Dave Crysler breaks down the difference between running by design and running by default, and why the problems that keep coming back are not bad luck or bad people. They are the designed output of a system nobody chose. Dave explains how default systems quietly accrete over time, why you can't see yours from the inside, and the order you have to follow to rebuild it on purpose, without buying anything new. What You'll Discover: • Why firefighting is a system problem, not a discipline problem, and why you can't out-discipline your way out of it • What a "default system" actually is and how it accretes one shortcut and one bolt-on at a time • Why your recurring problems are the system working exactly as it was unintentionally built to work • How your "lens of experience" keeps the real problem invisible from the inside • Why swapping one CRM or ERP for another just extends the same broken system • The hidden tax a default system charges your people, and why your best ones leave first • Why the order matters: planning, then people, then process, then technology • How to use a Cost of Chaos calculator to put a real dollar number on the problem • The crawl, walk, run path from default to design you can start Monday morning If you feel like you are running the same fire drill every week, watching your capacity stall every time you try to grow, and asking your team why the output isn't there, the problem probably isn't your effort or your tools. It's the system underneath, and it's fixable. Start by making it visible, then design it on purpose.

  6. Jun 23

    Your Best Person Is About to Quit (And You Have No Idea)

    Dave Crysler sits down with Greg Harrod, a 30-year manufacturing leader and Certified Working Genius facilitator, to unpack a pattern that quietly drains operations teams: the most dependable person on the floor is often the closest to burnout. Because leaders trust their best people, they keep handing them more, until reliable becomes overloaded and the resignation nobody saw coming lands on the desk. Greg and Dave dig into why it happens, the early warning signs most leaders miss, and how to redistribute ownership without lowering standards or sacrificing accountability. What You'll Discover: • Why the people you trust most are the ones you unknowingly push toward burnout • The difference between being good at the work and being energized by it, and why it matters • A simple two-question check that surfaces burnout before a resignation does • How "just because you can doesn't mean you should" reshapes the way you assign work • The early warning signs that a dependable person is running out of road • Why overload is almost always a clarity problem, not a people problem • How to redistribute work across a team without lowering standards or accountability • The story behind the Working Genius model and what it reveals about overloaded leaders • What to actually do Monday morning if you recognize one of these people on your team If you've got a go-to person who never drops the ball, this conversation is your early warning system. Greg and Dave give you the language and the questions to spot the strain before it costs you your best person. Greg's Leadership Clarity Scorecard is a ten-minute starting point you can find at leadershipclarityscorecard.com.

  7. Jun 16

    Your Team Wastes the First Hour of Every Day

    Before anybody on your team makes a sale, builds a product, or delivers a service, they are logging into tools, running reports, and trying to piece together what to do next. Dave Crysler calls this admin overhead, the hidden time tax of figuring out what the work is before anyone can actually do it. In this solo episode, he breaks down how to flip the model: instead of making people pull information out of your systems, you push the contextualized action straight to them. It is technically a push, but as Dave explains, it is still working at the demand of the customer, and it is one of the cheapest ways to get capacity back without hiring anyone or buying anything. What You'll Discover: • Why the first hour of your team's day disappears before real work even starts • What admin overhead actually is, and why it never shows up on a report • The push versus pull reframe, and why pushing information is not the same as pushing work • How the full kit discipline from Theory of Constraints applies to office and sales work • What a pushed quote follow up looks like in practice, and the time it saved a two person team • The difference between automation and AI, and why accuracy is the trap most people miss • Where pushing goes wrong, and how to avoid creating a new firehose nobody reads • Why this is a process problem, not a software purchase, and where technology actually belongs • The one thing you can do Monday to start cutting admin overhead without spending a dime If your best people are buried in busywork and you keep thinking the answer is more headcount or another tool, this episode offers a different lever. Stop making your team hunt for the work. Push it to them, and let their time go where it actually matters.

  8. Jun 9

    Everybody Says "Capture Tribal Knowledge." Nobody Tells You How.

    Every operations leader has heard the advice: capture your tribal knowledge before it walks out the door, write the SOP, get it out of people's heads. Dave Crysler breaks down why that advice keeps failing, and it is not the part you think. The hard part was never writing the document. It is pulling the knowledge out of the person in the first place, and that is the gap nobody talks about. Dave walks through a real story of a lab that solved a problem they had lived with for over a decade in a single conversation, then lays out the workflow that actually gets the knowledge out: capture, observe, synthesize. What You'll Discover • Why most SOPs end up as documents nobody uses, and what the format gets wrong • The real reason your best people can't just write down what they know • How experience makes your own knowledge invisible, even to you • Why a blank screen kills knowledge capture before it starts • The kinds of questions that actually pull tribal knowledge out of someone's head • How "how deep is deep enough" works the same way a five whys does • The capture, observe, synthesize workflow and why skipping a step breaks it • How one captured insight can travel far past operations into sales and marketing • Why technology comes last when you are documenting what your team knows • What to do Monday morning to start capturing tribal knowledge with no tools at all If you have a team where one person holds the knowledge everyone else depends on, this episode is for you. Stop telling people to "go document it" and start asking the questions that actually surface what they know. The knowledge that runs your shop already exists. The work is pulling it out the right way. To get a running start, the Operations Workbench we built walks you through this exact flow, capture, observe, synthesize, and it is free to use. The tool is optional. The questions are not.

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About

When it comes to your business, you know everything – except what you don't. Hosted by David Crysler, each episode we dive into finding and solving everyday business problems. Learn from business leaders and subject matter experts about the challenges they've overcome, and the challenges they still face. Join us for fresh insights, real talk, and inspiration to grow your business!

Information

  • Creator
    the Crysler Club
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    197
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © the Crysler Club
  • Show Website
    Everyday Business Problems