EP167: From Chaos to Control: Time Management Tips for Contractors

Sometimes we think this is a really important thing because maybe there's a deadline attached to it or there's a quality issue attached to it. And so we make something that is important and make it urgent, even though it doesn't need to be. Right. So we end up being the person who's putting out all of these fires all day long. Because we haven't created the ideal situation for our team who is supposed to make our life easier. We've created a situation where they rely on us to do their job every single day. They rely on us to make decisions. And so what ends up happening is, and I know if you're listening to this, you've said this before, well, it's just faster if I do it myself. It's just faster if I do it myself, right? I know every one of you listening to this have said that it's just faster if I do it myself. In reality is if you would actually just spend an extra 20 minutes one time showing someone how to do something, you'll never have to do it again. And then you just, you know, you may save 10 hours over the course of the next year or two if you just spent 20 minutes today showing them how to do it. So you. You sacrifice 20 minutes of your already crazy day, show them how to do it. And then that saves you 10 hours of execution over the next year versus I'll do it myself, right? Which may take you an hour each time you do it yourself and then 10 more times over the course of the year or nine more times. So you end up spending 10 hours, quote, doing it yourself 10 times. We create this environment in our head where we just don't have enough time. I remember telling my wife all the time because my wife works in higher education now, but before that she was a physical therapist and she would have a really busy schedule. So you might see 10,12,14 patients a day. So it's a full day of working hard, you know, getting the stuff done. But then I would always say, yeah, but dear, but at the end of the day, you get to go home. You know, for me, being a business owner, I have to go back home and then I have to work on estimates and I have to do invoices and I have to do payroll and I have to do this and I got to work the weekend. I got to work the evenings. You know, you get to go home at the end of the day. I finish if I have to finish the day, let's say at 5 p. m. because my son has a baseball game and then I get done with that and it's too late and I don't have time to work on anything. then in my mind, I'm starting the next day in a negative, like out of gas, because I'm like four hours behind on all the stuff I got to get done. So now instead of doing 12 hours of work today, I have to do 16 hours of work today. That's what I would say all the time. Every morning, it's like waking up and you're being in the negative before you start work. That's what it felt like. If you feel like that in your business. If you feel like you're starting the day in the negative, you're not doing something correctly in your business. Now, I don't, you know, obviously there's hundreds of things that you could be doing. I don't know what those are and I'd love to help you figure those out. But if that's your case, you're not doing something correctly or you're not doing a lot of things correctly. And we need to figure out what those are and figure out quickly. Because that's how you lead to burnout. That's where you get burnout. Because you are doing or trying to do 26 hours of work in an 8 to 12 hour day or 16 hour day. Some of you are probably laughing and like 12 hours. I'd love to only work 12 hours. I work 16 hours.

Some of you wear that like a badge of honor. Like, that's a good thing. You know, these contractors, they don't know. They got it easy. They don't know what it's like to work 16 hours a day. I would look at you and say, buddy, you're not doing something correctly. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of you are in beast mode and you're trying to grow, you know, something amazing. You're trying to do amazing things in your life and business. And so you just work that much because you're trying to get ahead. And I'm not knocking you for that. If that's what you want to do, then you go do that. Go in beast mode. I don't care. I'm talking to the ones that don't want to do that and they are doing it. The ones that feel like at the end of the day, they work their ass off and they're dead tired and they feel like they actually went in reverse because they have more work to do at the end of the day than when they started. And their goal that day was to knock down their list. That's the ones I'm talking to. If you're doing kicking butt in your business and you're in beast mode and you want to work 12,16 hours a day, seven days a week, because you're trying to grow this thing and you have big plans and you're executing, have at it. Good for you. Go in beast mode. Okay. But for the majority of the people that I talk to, they're not trying to be in beast mode or they are in beast mode and they're still barely keeping up. That's a telltale, tall tale. What's the word? That's a telltale sign that you're not doing something right. And usually it's because we're doing non-valuable tasks. Remember, non-negotiables is what we want to do in the morning. Most of you are doing non-valuable tasks. You're going and getting materials. Guys, I tell you right now, I don't care what you do. If you're the owner of a business and you're the one going and getting the materials for your crews every single day, you're doing it wrong. Straight up, you're doing it wrong. You should not be the person getting materials ever. You shouldn't. It should either be a low level person on your team. It shouldn't even be your foreman, by the way. It should be the lowest person on your team getting materials. Or better yet, you have it delivered. Now you can order the materials. You can put the information together and order it, but it should be delivered. And so most of you are like, well, that, you know, every time I deliver, let's just say I need three sheets of drywall. They're going to charge me $65 to deliver it, Brad. Well, then charge more. Either get better at estimating your materials, order extra materials, or pay the delivery fees and factor it into your pricing. If I'm doing a job and I have to order materials and it's going to cost me $65 to have it material delivered, I'm just charging the customer $65 more. If it's a $10,000 job and I'm going to have three deliveries of $65, I just add that into my $10,000 job. Whatever 65 times three is, I don't know, let's say it's 50 bucks. I'm going to add the extra $150 to the cost of my job. Now it's a $10,150 job. Do you think somebody is going to say, I was going to hire you at $10,000, but a $10,150 is just too much, so I'm not going to hire you. Do you really think that's what's going to be the deal breaker for you? No. And if you like, well, Brad.

Then factor that in. Factor in three different deliveries to your job. If you only typically do one delivery, that's 50 bucks. But let's say on average, and by the way, this is why you job cost, because you would know this information. If you job cost and you know that on average, we have to make an extra trip to the store. Even if we have the first one delivered, we always have to make an additional trip to the store. Then guess what I'm doing? I'm putting two delivery charges in my estimate. And I'm planning for that. So the next time I have to have a material delivered, it's already in my estimate. Some of you think that your time is just free time. In other words, what you do in your business is free time because you're not paying someone. So, you know, after hours, get this. We used to, when I was doing a lot more like handyman, small job type stuff and where I just had to pick up, you know, like a a new doorknob for a job, or I had to pick up something small. I would like with my family, we would stop by the store after church on the way home and get all of the materials I needed for those jobs that week, the small jobs, because I felt like that was saving me time, which was in turn making me more money. Well, I'll just do this off the clock. It's free. My time's free. So what you're saying is, and I'm talking to myself here, what you're saying, Brad, is that taking an hour away from your family to go get materials for a client of yours because it's free, even though it's costing you an hour, is the absolute best way to run a business. That's a growable and sustainable way to run a business. That's what you're saying, Brad. Right. It took me a long time to realize this is stupid. Why am I doing this stuff? My clients are paying me for a turnkey solution. So I'm going to give them a turnkey solution and charge them for it. So even though, yes, technically I could just stop by. Sometimes we go to the store after church to get something for home. So we're already at the store. I'm not saying like. If you needed one little tiny thing, you're already in the store for personal reasons that you can't buy it. I'm not saying don't do that. But if you're making special trips because you're trying to, quote, save time or on your way home at the end of the day, you stop by the store because it's on the way home and that's going to save you more time, then you're not doing it right. You're just simply not doing it right. So you have to make sure that you factor this stuff into your estimates. As far as like getting materials. There's lots of other ways around this guys. You can order materials in bulk. I was talking to a gentleman who does a specific type of service. And so they pretty much always use the same materials. Right. And he does buy some things in bulk and he has to store them somewhere. He has a little garage. And I said, why don't you, I was like, how many times a week? do you have to go get materials? You know, like he has some in stock, but then it always ends up like they use their stock out and then they get to the job and they need like one more piece of whatever that is. And then they have to go to the store and get that one piece. And I was like, well, how often does that happen? He said, nah, about maybe twice a week. So twice a week, like you run out of materials and you got to go to the store or, you know, to the shop or the warehouse supplier, pick it up and deliver it. Yeah. And he says the warehouse place is like 45 minutes away. So twice a week, you drive to the warehouse, get materials, deliver it to your guys. Yes. So 45 minutes one way, that's an hour and a half. You got to be there, hang out. It's easily two hours. That's four hours a week on average that you waste going and getting materials when you could just. buy more bulk and that way you can eliminate that problem because he's buying in bulk but he's not buying enough bulk so he may buy enough bulk for two jobs or three jobs or four jobs right but he might be doing two or three jobs a week so like this what he's buying in bulk is only lasting him a week or two and then he's repeating that process i was like dude why don't you just like order more of it Instead of buying two weeks worth, buy three months worth. Yes, it's going to cost more money, but if you know you're going to use this, then why wouldn't you do that? Plus, when you buy that kind of bulk, you save money, right? They give you discounts. You get pallet discounts, whatever, bulk discounts, trailer discounts. So you can actually save money. I said, do you have enough storage space for it? No, not really. I can make it happen, but if I do that. then I'm actually going to lose rent money for that space. I was like, okay, well, what about getting a shipping container? Would that work? He's like, yeah, I've thought about that. That could work. Shipping container is like $4,000 or $5,000. You pay it once, you own it, right? If you don't have the extra space per se, listen, not everybody's situation is available to do this. I understand that. But what I'm telling you is there's ways around solving problems. to free up time that you have so that you're not the one doing it. That's what you're supposed to do in business. As an owner, you're supposed to fire yourself as many times as possible. You're the current material getter. Figure out a solution to that and fire yourself. You're the current, you know, salesman, but you don't have time to do sales. Then hire a salesman per se and fire yourself. There's ways to do this, and this is what you're supposed to be doing. The other thing I'll leave you with on this is that the way you do time blocking and the way you be most productive is not by doing the same 15 tasks every single day. If you have to switch tasks 15 times in a day, I guarantee you, I'll bet any amount of money in the world, you are not productive. Anytime you switch tasks, it's been scientifically proven. That if you switch a task, it takes about seven minutes on average in order for you to actually switch your brain over into the new task. And then if you actually switch back to your existing task, like in the example where you're doing an estimate, you have to leave to get materials. You come back and start your estimate. On average, statistically, it takes 23 minutes for you to get back into focus mode or to pick up where you left off. So every time you switch tasks, you lose seven minutes. Every time you switch back, you lose 23 minutes. If you do that, you know, twice a day, that's an hour of productivity lost. You do it four times a day. That's two hours of productivity lost every single day. So the way you do things is, you know, and maybe you have to split it up into two days. But the idea here is on Mondays, I'm doing invoicing. That's it. Right. I'm not doing invoicing every single day. Some of you, you're doing multiple jobs. And so as the job comes in, then you do the invoice. The next day, a new job comes in, you do the invoice. The next day, two jobs come in, you do the invoicing. Just pick a day of the week, let's say Monday morning from 8 to 12, and you just do all of your invoices from the previous week. Once you get into invoice mode in your brain, You stay there until you're done. And your productivity level for that will go way up and you will end up saving one to two hours a week on that one task because you've bulk done that task. And then maybe Monday afternoon, you do or you order materials for the week ahead or the next week or you do your scheduling, whatever. Friday afternoons, you do all your scheduling for the next week. Friday morning, you order all your materials, whatever that is. But a lot of you guys are doing the same 15 tasks and you're doing it every single day. So you get to the job, you get to the shop in the morning or whatever, the office, and you dispatch your guys. Hey guys, here's the work for the day. Cool. The next thing you do is you, you know, you log into social media and you make some posts, reply, blah, blah, blah. And then the next thing you do is you do the invoices for that day. And then the next thing you do, you do the sales, you know, maybe a couple sales calls or call people back. And then the next thing you do is you order materials for the next job and so on and so on. But you do that every single day. That is not the way you create a productive environment. You bulk do the task together. I can't tell you how many times I put off doing estimates simply because it was a big estimate that was going to take me a ton of time. And I would wait weeks, sometimes two or three weeks to do this estimate. Half the time in the process, lose the job because I was taking too long. Make up a bunch of excuses. Oh, I'm sorry, this and this and just had nothing but problems. I'll get to you next week. Right. And then the third reason is because I'd forget everything that I had just went out and did the estimate on. So I wouldn't do it. I would just keep putting it off, keep putting it off, keep putting it off. So whatever you're putting off in your business that's stressing you out in the process is a pretty good indicator of a system that you need to create or fix or a process you need to streamline. Those are big rocks. So if you need a more streamlined invoicing process, a more streamlined job costing process, then that's what you should work on first. Why? Because if you have to do that. If you're doing it every day, five days a week or three days a week or whatever, and it takes you a long time and you completely dread having to do that, then if you create a process to streamline that and make it as easy as possible, you will no longer dread doing that task and you'll be much more efficient at doing it and you'll do it quicker. And when you do that, you'll free up time. So as you keep chipping away at these things that you hate doing, Whether you hire someone out or streamline the process or a combination of both, you're chipping away at all of this negative energy that you have because you hate doing that task and making it so easy that now maybe, just maybe, you actually enjoy doing that task because you've made it in a way that's simple and potentially even fun and exciting. But we choose. the path of right now, least resistance. We actually sacrifice our future for today's comfort, where if we would just sacrifice today's comfort, the future would be much easier for us. It's just quicker if I do it myself, right? That's a perfect example of sacrificing our future for today's comfort. It's easier for me to do it myself 10 times. than it is for me to spend 20 minutes explaining to you how to do it. So guys, I hope you got some value out of this podcast. If you're doing things in your business and you just feel like you are overwhelmed every single day, remember you're not doing it right. Business is not supposed to be that kind of hard. A lot of you are confused about what hard work is or how hard it is to own a business. Owning a business is not hard because you physically have to work so many hours. Owning a business is hard because you have to do things that you're not good at, that you don't like doing, that's repetitious, that's boring. That's what's hard about business, making tough decisions, letting people go, talking to bad clients. That's what's hard about business. Business is not supposed to be you work 16 hours a day on the tools and burn yourself out. That's not what... That's not the definition of owning a business in that it's hard and not everybody could do it. You know, if business was easy, everybody would do it. I work 16 hours a day on the tools. If everybody could do that, then it would be easy. That's not what they're talking about. If that's you, you're doing it wrong. Let me know if you want help with that. At the very least, I can at least do a consult with you, do a strategy call and figure out what you can change in your business. Go to the show notes. There's links in there. Schedule a call with me. More than happy to sit down with you for 20,30 minutes and see if there's opportunities to eliminate some of this chaos in your business. So guys, thanks for hanging out with me. I'll see you on the next episode. Remember, you can find me on all the social media platforms, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook. Search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. And remember, until next time, guys, profit is not a dirty word.