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How Accountability and Zero-Based Budgeting Saves a Ton of Money For Business with Sean McGraw

📅 February 26, 2020 ⏱️ 1:15:11 🎤 Sean McGraw, Tommy Mello

Chapters

Click to jump to section

  • 0:00
    Meet Sean McGraw
  • 3:15
    Hard work and starting out
  • 9:54
    Walking the team floor
  • 13:12
    Operating lean without a huge warehouse
  • 16:32
    Finding and fixing the bottlenecks
  • 19:47
    Standardize it: build the playbook
  • 23:03
    Managing cold and medium leads
  • 26:21
    Canvassing over radio and TV
  • 29:40
    Why canvassing isn't dead
  • 39:35
    The cost of what you're not watching
  • 42:54
    Zero-based budgeting explained
  • 46:14
    Building your customer avatar
  • 1:12:48
    Praise your people in public

Speakers

S
Sean McGraw
Owner, Window-Replacement Company (Metro Detroit); Inc. 5000 Honoree
T
Tommy Mello
Host; Founder & CEO, A1 Garage Door Service

Key Takeaways

Zero-based budgeting forces you to justify every dollar from scratch — Sean found money leaking on things like utilities for closed buildings.

Accountability plus lean operations means you don't need a huge warehouse or bloated overhead to run a fast-growing company.

Standardize the 90% — build a playbook so people can execute consistently, and only handle the exceptions manually.

Canvassing isn't dead: instead of radio and TV, Sean's team goes out, knocks, and calls — and it works.

Find and fix your bottlenecks; growth stalls at the constraint, not everywhere at once.

Build a clear customer avatar so your marketing and sales attract the people you actually want to serve.

Praise your people publicly — small recognition habits compound into a culture people don't want to leave.

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