Interview with Jeff Gray, Raving Partner Business Optimization and Lean Methodologies

Access the full recording here at whereweconverge.com

Reposting of script with Seattle personality, Trae Holiday, Day with Tray Holiday, guest post

Trae: Welcome back everyone to The Day with Trey. I’m your host Trey Holiday. I want to now welcome y’all to something we’re about to be learning on this.

I gotta give Jeff a welcome. I’m so excited to learn all about Lean Methodologies. Hi Jeff.

Jeff: Hello. How are you? Good, good. Thank you for having me.

Trae: Yeah, this is a pleasure because, you know, you got to tell us about Lean Revisions. That’s your company, right? And what got you into this kind of work? Give us a little bit of your background.

Jeff: So, Lean Revisions has been around for about 10 years now. So, before that, I was working at like Boeing and helping them optimize how they build their airplanes.

And so, I got laid off, went to another company, got laid off again, decided to start my own company. And so that’s how it began. So, it’s just evolved over time, just helping organizations and helping small businesses, large businesses, multinational companies utilize what’s called Lean Methodologies.

And it’s just all about making things better. You know, looking at how you operate your business and look for opportunities to be better. Your workforce, your team, the way you put things together, your service, your product, your output, always focusing on customer value.

So, it’s really, really fun. And it’s great going into organizations and seeing how they do things and helping them identify areas of opportunities that that’s been bugging them for years. And so, it’s a Lean Methods. There’s a lot of tools that we teach and share with everybody and try to empower them and transfer knowledge so they can go do it themselves after we roll out. So, it’s fun.

Trae: So essentially, it’s almost like consulting, right? Like you come in, you consult, you showcase like here are some amazing tools that you can employ, but you give folks a customized approach, right? Like tell us about something that might be different between a large company versus like a small startup. So, let’s take your operation.

Jeff: I was hoping you’d ask me this because driving in, I’m going to make it fit with what you do. So, you have your operation here. It’s awesome.

It’s actually coming down here. I didn’t know what I was going to get into, but I knew you did production and podcasts and TV and all that. I’ve been on studios before, but you have a team.

You have your editors. You have your photographers. You’ve got your continuity. You’ve got your stage managers. You’ve got your audio. You’ve got all of that, and it has to come together.

I was watching your show this morning just to know what I was getting into, and I thought, let me just bring it down to your level where I can share how what I would do for you. I would come in here and watch what you’ve been doing. I watched the show, seeing how your people are working with you, where your problems are.

If you had problems with your equipment, you had problems with getting people here on time, whatever that might be, and I just help you understand your system, and then you and your folks would say, hey, Naomi over here could say, you know, actually, Trae, maybe you need to do this. Maybe we should try this, some other way of doing something, and we take that idea from your worker and maybe try to input that into your operations, and that’s all about empowering your people and making it easier for you. All you have to do is sit in the chair and test your mic.

Trae: See, that’s beautiful, and I think, you know, earlier this week, we’ve been talking to amazing folks who are going to be a part of the Black Business Leadership Conference. I know you’ll be there speaking. We’re going to talk about that soon, but, you know, just the ideas that folks like yourself who come from, you know, major businesses, corporations, you’re making them better, and now you’re like, no, let’s bring it into community.

Let’s kind of make sure everyone gets that same level of optimization for their business. That is beautiful to me, and I love that here in the Pacific Northwest, we have such a great concentrated effort where we can see all of these phenomenal folks at something like the Black Business Leadership Conference, right? So, tell us about your connection there and what you’re going to be speaking about.

Jeff: So, my connection there is about two years now. I’m not really sure how I found them on the web or somewhere, but I’ve been traveling all over the planet, been doing all kinds of these big things, and now I’m getting a little older. Just a little bit.

It’s time to, like, you know, stay home a little more often, and how can I get back to the community? And so, my son, he’s been doing this with me for a long time. He goes into junior high schools and high schools and teaches the young folks on just what this method is and thinking about systems and processes and quality and taking your ideas and making them grow into fruition. And so, he’s been doing that part, so it gives me a little more time to start speaking and start doing things like this to share the word of lean and how it can help you in any kind of business.

And so, I’ll be speaking about how you need to look at risk in your business, the legal aspects of it, and then how this methodology can help you mitigate those risks throughout your business. So, I got 40 minutes to tell them the concepts to try to get them to understand that it’s easy to do. It’s not, you know, rocket science.

It’s really some basic things that you just need to look at, and by having a consultant like me come in there, my team, you know, we can see how you’re doing things. I can just sit here for a whole day and watch you put together this show and tell you those areas of opportunities that, you know, I think might be helpful for you. You can take them or not.

Your people can take them or not, but that’s the kind of mindset that we’ve tried to instill in people in any business.

Trae: Well, there’s a lot to be said about that too, and I appreciate like you sharing it in that way. I mean, tell us about the success rate of these methodologies.

Jeff: I’ve had 100 percent. No one fails when they bring me in. No one.

I make sure that I transfer knowledge. I teach them what they need. Every industry has different processes, procedures, systems, people, challenges, and once we see what they are, I can help you implement the right methods and tools for success.

I’ve worked with theaters, helped people generate 30 percent more revenue in a concession stand in a theater. 30 percent more revenue for a non-profit theater. I’ve helped, you know, Adidas supply chain over in Asia, and Hong Kong, and China, and all that.

Helped them with their global supply chain so people can get their apparel on time for Christmas presents. Microsoft, Amazon, you know, all kinds of different industry. Hospitals.

It’s just looking at the system and looking at what’s happening and then using the right methods. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I started doing this building airplanes at Boeing, so taking three million parts together and putting them on a 747 and making sure it’s safe, and flies, and fuel efficient, and all that.

That’s what this methodology will do. So, no matter what you’re doing, you know, a doctor, I’ve been in hospitals, I’ve been all over the place. Finance, higher education, technology, you name it.

Trae: Look, okay Jeff, we’re gonna be talking because I got questions. Yeah. Right, but I really love that you are now saying, let me take all of this expertise and bring it into the community.

Jeff: Yeah. And there is a different need because I see that this is exactly, I was just talking about this, it’s a difference between having a business for one generation or multiple generations, right, to be able to optimize their output, their product, their line, whatever it is. The fact that they can, there’s some simple things that they can really be doing and staying consistent with them to see those results over time.

Trae: So thank you for being able to like say, let me bring all this into communities, you know, because it’s necessary and that’s the kind of stuff that folks are going to be getting when they come to the Black Business Leadership Conference. Yes, they will. Jeff, of course, if folks are trying to connect with Lean Revisions and connect with you specifically, please look right here in this camera closest to me, let them know how they tap in.

Jeff: You can contact me at leanrevisions.com. You can also email contact at leanrevisions.com and we also, if you go to our website, there’s a lot of templates and a lot of resources. You can go to our website and look for the White Belt Training. It’s 10 videos that we’ve put together.

They’re about five minutes each and it walks you through this methodology at a high level and then we have you go online and take the knowledge check and I get the results so I know who you are and if you’ve paid attention and if you need to reach out, you know, always reach out to us too. So leanrevisions.com. I also just started a podcast called The Lean Lounge. So I’ve taken notes.

That’s why I’m videotaping your setup. I got some questions for you too but that’s why I want to share the knowledge, you know, have people come in just like here, that’s what you’re doing and just share this and give back, you know, because it’s not that hard. Big businesses have been doing this for many, many years since the 50s and now smaller businesses need to look at how they operate and so go to the website, do the White Belt, take an hour of your time and just kind of see what this stuff is and how it’ll help you and then give us a call and watch the podcast too, Spotify and all that too.

Trae: There we go, Jeff. Thank you. Great, thank you so much for being here.

Jeff: Thank you. Thanks for your work.

To find out more about Business Optimization, visit https://betravingknows.com/services/business-optimization/