Lee Bradley | Operations & AI

UK SME owners: I find the work that should not need doing. 38 years in vehicle accident repair, ran a £20m+ P&L. Free 4-minute check in the link.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

https://t.co/ai84vRcc3y

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

A Sunday job for plenty of owners: scrolling back through the week's emails to find the ones that were actually orders.

A quote request buried in a reply. A customer who said yes on Wednesday and nobody noticed.

That isn't admin. It's work that should not need doing, and it's taken your Sunday.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

Bodyshops lived with this. A customer brings in a quote for half the price, and on paper the two look the same. The difference is what gets checked behind the panel. The shops that held their prices stopped selling the paint job and started explaining what a bad repair costs you later.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@ElbaumJacob Same with any job you hand over completely. The work still gets done, but nobody in the building knows why it works any more. Fine until it stops working and there's nobody who can tell you what changed.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@Yasmine_FX The bit I'd want before switching on refunds: a limit, and a person who sees every one. An invoice going out wrong is annoying. Money going out wrong is a different conversation.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@fourweekmba 84% is a big drop for firms that still look great on the sales line. Same lesson at any size: a business can be busy, growing and short of cash all at once. The difference is the big five can borrow their way to 2028. A firm of eight can't.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@Golden_Slumb @DanielPriestley It did. It tracked sales, used the weekly figures to set a two-week maximum for each item, and showed anything running low in red with the order quantity worked out to get back to that maximum. Not bad for a 14-year-old on a Spectrum.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@vickiehenny4 In my experience the hard part isn't trusting the person. It's that how you look after clients only lives in your head, so nobody else can do it your way yet. What's the one thing you'd be most worried a new hire would get wrong?

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@Velazquez013 A diary where you can see which jobs are waiting on a part and which are waiting on you. Most owners only find out about the second lot when the phone rings.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@Ken_LinkWell Number 2 is the one I'd watch. In bodyshops the estimate was never the hard part. It was the thing the estimator spotted that wasn't on the sheet. A drafter can learn the price list. Knowing when the price list doesn't apply is still the job.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

A clip from an Australian Senate hearing is doing the rounds. A senator asks why a trained combat engineer can't change a lightbulb on his own base. The answer: log it in an app and wait for a contractor.

Easy to laugh at. Most businesses have a smaller version.

The quote that needs the owner's sign-off. The £12 part that needs a purchase order. The fix everyone on the floor can do but nobody is allowed to.

Rules like that usually start after one bad day. Nobody goes back to check they still earn their keep.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@StuffKeithBuys Bodyshops taught me that one. Diary booked solid, insurer paying when it felt like it. Full workshop, empty bank. The 13-week plan is what tells you which of those two businesses you're actually running.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@FranciswongCro Same with estimating systems in bodyshops. There was always a new one that would change everything. The shops that ran well were the ones where everyone knew how a job moved through the building. Put the best system on a messy process and you just get the mess faster.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

Three places I've watched jobs go to wait:

The inbox of the person on holiday.
The WhatsApp group nobody scrolls back through.
"I'll sort that", said out loud on Tuesday to nobody in particular.

None of them show up on the job board. All of them show up on the invoice date.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

If you want to see where the work that shouldn't need doing hides in your firm, the free 4-minute check is here.
https://t.co/IW1luEA42Z

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

Legisin became a limited company last week. I filled in a form online, clicked submit, and that was that. No ribbon. No cake.

38 years in vehicle accident repair, and the biggest step of the new career felt about as dramatic as ordering a wing mirror.

Now the real work starts: finding the work that should not need doing. Starting with my own.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@emollick Bodyshops had this with paint. Three silvers with names like a perfume range, and you still sprayed a test card before you trusted any of them.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@emollick The bit I'd want to know is who checked it. A team project three years ago had four people arguing over whether it was right. One person 10x further along can be 10x further down the wrong road with nobody to tell them.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@AlexHormozi In 1998 I took a pay cut from £21,000 to £16,500 to get into the bodyshop office, then worked three nights a week behind a pub bar for 18 months to cover it. Two young daughters at home. Nobody saw that part. They just saw the job title a few years later.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

HMRC may soon be able to ask for the AI chat you used to work out a tax figure.

The worry for most owners isn't that someone reads it. It's that the chat is the only place the working exists.

38 years in vehicle accident repair taught me the same thing about job cards. If the reasoning lives in one conversation nobody else can see, it isn't a record. It's a memory.

Put the number in the books with how you got there. Use the chat as a scratch pad, not the file.

[Lee Bradley | Operations & AI @Legisin]

@Codie_Sanchez 27 years of repeat clients on $3k a year of marketing means the real asset is someone's memory of whose house takes which lights and where the plug is. Hope that came over with the keys.