Episode•April 28, 2025•49 min

EP216: Overcoming Perfectionism: A Contractor's Guide to Better Business

When it comes to business, especially in the construction field, trying to be perfect can sometimes cut both ways. While having high standards is important, always trying to be perfect can stop growth, make it hard to keep employees, and make the workplace unstable. In this episode, Brad talks about: Definition and causes of perfectionism The role of upbringing and environment Personality traits contributing to perfectionism The impact of social and cultural pressures Strategies to combat perfectionism Link to Resources: Grab Brad's tell-all book: The Contractor Profit Blueprint https://thecontractorprofitblueprint.com You've been invited to check out Job Tread! https://www.hammerandgrind.com/jobtread Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Transcript

0:03

You have to understand, perfection is the enemy of greatness. Hey, it's Brad here. And before we get into the show, I want to tell you about the show sponsor. Now, I personally use this company in my own business. And so I was thrilled whenever they reached out and said they wanted to sponsor the show. Today's sponsor is JobTread. JobTread is an all-in-one construction management software. JobTread streamlines processes for builders and contractors from estimating and scheduling to job costing and invoicing. With JobTread, you can create precise estimates quickly improving the chance of winning jobs. And their dynamic scheduling allows you to keep projects on track with Gantt charts and scheduling tools. JobTread also allows you to collaborate with teams, vendors, and clients in one location. No more missed information. Who said, she said. It's all in one location. And their API integration tools connect with your favorite software like QuickBooks Online, HammerCRM, or any other API. friendly apps. JobTread is perfect for builders and contractors of all sizes. Whether you're a solo contractor or run a large team, JobTread scales to fit your needs and works great for remodelers. home builders, deck builders, pool builders, and general contractors. Try Drop Tread today and learn how it can help streamline, manage, and grow your construction business. Visit jobtread. com or click the link in the show notes for more details. Now let's get to the show. Hey, welcome back to the show. This episode is going to probably be a gut punch for a lot of you. And this is something that I struggled with many times for, or not many times, for a long time in my business and still continue to struggle with this. And we're talking about perfectionism. Perfectionism is the enemy of greatness. And the reason why I'm having this episode was like earlier this week, I was talking with one of my one-on-one clients and he struggles to find good help. and keep them and retain them. And some of the, you know, through our conversations, through getting to know this contractor, you know, there's lots of things that stand out to me that I relate with because I was the same way. And so he struggles a lot with perfectionism. Now, before we get into how it affects your business, what to do with it, steps it takes to eliminate it, let's talk quickly about what it is and how it comes about, okay? because this is something that I see a lot of contractors struggle with. They believe, and this is where like the high quality work people, this is where they struggle. Because the reason why we do this is not because we feel like this is the level of work that has to be done. It's because we do it, you know, as a defense mechanism for ourself. Okay. So let's dive into quickly. what can cause perfectionism in ourselves. And so there's, I just did a quick little research and I got six different topics or six different areas of what can cause perfectionism. I'm just going to kind of read through these real quickly. Number one is upbringing and environment, which I believe is probably the most likely culprit for most people in why perfectionism exists. High parental expectations. If your parents or guardians had a very high standards, or they were overly critical, you might have internalized the idea that you need to be perfect in order to be accepted. And here's the kicker or loved. So perfectionism is the result of highly critical parents or an environment. And we do it as a need as a self preservation tool when we're young, so that we can feel loved and or accepted. And that's probably the most likely culprit for many, many contractors. This also includes praise for performance. Growing up, being praised mainly for achievements like grades or awards rather than effort or character can lead to perfectionist thinking. My son is eight years old and he's playing baseball. And you see this in sports all the time. You see, you know, at eight years old, they're not like they're not professional players. OK, and most of them are struggling. And so it's pretty common that. When a ball is hit to someone, they throw at the first base, and it's going to be an overthrow. The first baseman's probably going to catch it, you know, maybe 50% of the time. And so you get these parents who are so performance-driven, like they want to have the perfect child, and they're coaching where they just always send kids every single time. They're always running. They're always sending them home. They're trying to score as many points as possible, not because they're trying to teach the kid how to be good and how to develop skills, but because they want to win, because they're trying to create the perfect environment for them, and they're doing it vicariously through their kids. They're living through their kids in order to try and make them feel good about themselves. These are the coaches that basically ruin sports for most kids. That's a little tangent, by the way. It drives me freaking nuts when I see these guys out there that have to win at all costs when these kids are eight years old, six, seven, eight, nine,10 years old. It's ridiculous, guys. They're not professionals. Give it up. But that's where that comes from, that desire to win for competitive edge. This is also a modeling behavior. So if caregivers or role models were perfectionists themselves, you might have picked up those patterns, right? So this is where that also plays in with the over-the-top coaches. Number two, personality traits. Some people are just naturally more conscientious, detail-oriented or driven, which can tip into perfectionism, especially if combined with anxiety or a fear of failure. So if you have someone that's naturally driven and they have a lot of high fear of failure, this can kind of lead into a perfectionist type of. Traits like neuroticism or sensitivity to criticism can make someone more likely to strive for impossible standards. You know, I'm not the most educated guy, a person out there. I don't even know what that word is. I'm assuming it's basically sensitivity to criticism. Number three, fail or fear of failure or judgment. Okay. So this is what a lot of people, this is where it comes from fear of failure or judgment. Perfectionism often acts as a shield. This is what I was talking about earlier. If you're perfect, then no one can criticize you. At least that's the logic. So if you have those highly critical parents and you are always criticized, then if you never make a mistake, people can't criticize you, right? So it's like a pain avoidance mechanism. Perfectionism is a pain avoidance mechanism. It can be rooted in low self-esteem, which usually is the case, thinking that you need to be perfect to be enough. Again, this is that love, you know, being accepted or loved. If I'm perfect, then I will be loved. If I'm perfect, I can't be criticized. If I'm perfect, no one can find fault in me. Those are all pain avoidance mechanisms. Number four, social and cultural pressures. Our culture tends to glorify success and having it all together, especially on social media, they can really crank up the pressure on someone. So, you know, the Instagram. you know, hustle culture, you see 21 year olds that are living in mansions, driving cars and jets. Most of that we know is fake and BS. I can rent a jet. I can rent a spark, you know, court car. I can rent a house. I even saw one video where a guy literally walked up to a house that he didn't own and was like, Hey, I just bought this mansion. You know, I'm going to be moving in, blah, blah, blah. And the people in the background, like, like come out and like, what are you doing on our property? They didn't even own the house. Right. And so like, that's just, This hustle culture that you see all the time, most of the time is fluff and full of BS. Okay. So that's, that's where some of that comes at cultural, you know, social pressures, you know, the academic and professional environments can reinforce it. Like the idea that mistakes are unacceptable. So sometimes even in colleges or formal education, they're teaching this stuff as a, an extension of good business practices. Number five, trauma or past experiences, a bad failure, bullying, or even a moment where you felt deeply ashamed or embarrassed can leave a lasting mark. I've mentioned this many, many times. If you haven't read the book, Mindset by Dr. Carol S. Dweck, you have to read that book because she talks about how your childhood... upbringing basically affects the rest of your life. And so childhood traumas, childhood experiences, things like this can literally affect the rest of your life. Roughly the first eight to 12 years of your life is going to create the personality that you have for the next 70 to 90 years of your life. And so if you don't address those things, it can leave a lasting impact and really hurt you for a long period of time. You know, sometimes perfectionism is a way of trying to regain control after something made you feel powerless. So you did something, you got caught with your pants down, you felt embarrassed to shame, people are laughing at you, whatever it is, you turn to perfectionism to try and regain control of the situation. Number six, the last one is mental health conditions. Perfectionism is often linked with anxiety disorders, OCD, eating disorders, and depression. It can be both a cause and a symptom. So these are like the six things that kind of have been identified as things that can cause perfectionism. I'm a firm believer that your upbringing and your environment are the main contributors to perfectionism. Now let's fast forward or come back to reality today, present day. The reason why we want to be a perfectionist with our work at any of these six things that I just mentioned, we try to impress the clients. We're trying to prevent failure. Mainly, it's what we're trying to do. It's a way to prevent failure or prevent embarrassment, right? To get accolades, all those things from having perfectionist mindset. And so it's really a problem in construction. Perfectionism is a major problem in your business, especially if you're trying to hire teams. Now, if you're a one-man show, and you want to live the artisan craftsman lifestyle, you know, where you work by yourself, you're perfectly happy with that, you do all the work on the tools, and it's just you, then be a perfectionist all day. I don't care. But if you're trying to hire people and you have a hard time keeping people long-term or even hiring them in the first place, there's a very good chance it's because you're a perfectionist. And most people, who have worked for another perfectionist can see all the red flags when they're talking to you and they're not trying to recreate that environment. Right? So like if you have a lot of interviews, but no one wants to work for you, that could be because they're seeing red flags. If you have a high turnover rate in a short period of time, that can be because you're a perfectionist and you have high standards. Now, there's a balance here. There's a balance between having standards that need to be met and then having perfectionist requirements. And so you got to have standards, period. You have to have standards in your business that have to be met. And if people aren't meeting that standard, that's a different situation than your perfectionism requiring such a high bar that 90% of the people out there can't meet on a regular basis. That's a different scenario. Right. So you have to have high standards, but we're not talking about perfectionism. And this is such a subjective topic because, you know, on a scale of one to 10, my 10 quality, meaning the best quality you can do, that might be at eight to you. So you may be like, you got to take it to the next level. And your eight might be someone else's six. And so it's really, really hard to kind of say, like, this is the standard of which is acceptable. And not acceptable. And yes, there's books and all kinds of things about, you know, quality standards and the construction industry, but that's not like, it still doesn't define like what's acceptable. If I take something as very simple as like a joint, you know, in a crown molding, like the joint in the corner, inside corner, like what's acceptable is a 32nd of a inch gap acceptable is a 16th acceptable. Is no gap whatsoever acceptable? Like what's acceptable, right? And so like we can argue as an industry about what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. But if you're over the top, like there cannot be any gaps whatsoever. Everything has to be perfectly flush. If it's not, it's sanded down, you know, to make it flush and everything has to be perfect. That's where you get into trouble. And here's what's crazy. And I was having this conversation with this contractor. When you're in something, when you live, breathe, sleep, die, everything, your whole world is about something. By default, you're going to be hypersensitive to that and the quality of it. Okay. Someone who's not in the industry, someone who is, let's say a banker, they work in the banking industry. They hire you to remodel their bathroom. They don't know what quality work looks like to the level that you know. So you're hypersensitive to this. They have no clue. This is why customers get screwed all the time by crappy contractors because they can't sense, they don't see the signs. They don't know what to look for, right? And so for you, back to the scale of one to 10 on a quality scale, If 10 is the best, you could be producing a six or seven on a scale of one to 10 in terms of quality, right? Like a measurable quality. And your clients come in and they see the project and they go, holy crap, Brad, this looks amazing. Like they're a 12 on their one to 10 scale. They are completely blown away. They're over the moon happy. They're about to refer you to five of their friends for $200,000 worth of work. Okay. That's how they are reacting. But simultaneously you're thinking to yourself, I know it looks good, but don't look at that joint over there and don't mess, you know, don't go over there and touch that tile because there's a 30 seconds of an inch lip on that. And don't look at that and don't touch that. And I hope you don't find that air. You're thinking in the back of your mind, You're critiquing all of the things that in your mind were not perfect, but you let them go because you just ran out of time or whatever it was. If that's you, then you are a perfectionist. Okay. Like seriously, that is the easiest way to know if you're a perfectionist. If when someone is giving you praise, you're thinking this isn't good enough. That means you are a perfectionist and you have a problem. Okay. I don't know how else to make this clear. You have to understand perfection is the enemy of greatness. Okay. Because you could deliver an eight quality product on a one to 10 scale and your client is over the moon happy, but you're worried about the last two levels. Okay. That's a problem. So here is kind of. This is how you have to kind of look at this. Now, again, this is completely subjective because I can do the exact same product for five different clients. I may get four people that are over the moon and I got one that complains. Well, maybe that client is a perfectionist, right? And so they're projecting that on you. That doesn't mean that you haven't met the standard. It means that they have a problem, right? And so... Whenever that happens and you're like, I don't want to be criticized. I hate being criticized. I hate people finding fault in me. I hate all of this negative attention. So now I got to up my game. You know what I'm saying? Like this is where crazy SOPs and crazy processes and systems come in because you had one customer out of 10 complain about something. And that drove you nuts because you're a perfectionist and you don't ever want to have that feeling again. You don't ever want to have a customer tell you, Brad, this isn't good enough. You know, because that crushes you inside. It brings back all of those memories and feelings that you had as a kid when your parents said, you're not good enough. You're not worthy. You're unlovable. That's the emotional response that you have whenever a customer says this isn't good enough. And so your solution. is to tighten the reins even more and require even more perfectionism in order to prevent that from ever happening again. When in reality, that client was just a ridiculous client because you have the history of the nine other clients who loved it, who you did the exact same quality level and they loved it, but one hated it. And now you got to tighten the reins, right? This is why. I implore you guys to really go back and visit your childhood and things that happened to you. I can't stress how important it is and how beneficial it is to go talk to a therapist about your childhood and things that are happening. This is not a weakness thing. This is not a, you're not a man. If you got to go to a counselor, that's BS. It's complete bullshit guys. I've talked to many counselors. They're helpful. So you have to look at that. This is how it rears up in your life, in your business. And then you project that onto your employees. And all you're doing is creating the exact same environment that your parents created for you and made you feel terrible. You're projecting that onto your employees and they feel the exact same way. Now, as a child, you can't escape that. So you create these mechanisms to allow you to get through life. As an adult, you can just say, screw this, I'm not putting up with it and leave. And that's what your employees do, right? So like, this is a big problem, guys. Perfectionism is a big problem in the construction industry. I'm not saying that you need to do crappy work. I'm not saying that at all. But you definitely need to know that there's levels to this. So how do you like reign this in? The best thing you can do is really, and this is going to be difficult for most of you if you're perfectionist. The best thing you can do is actually lower your standards to the point to where people start complaining. Your clients start complaining. If you are doing a tile shower, if you're a tile setter and you're setting the shower yourself, you personally are doing the tile and, or even if you're having a sub, it doesn't matter. Your employees, the tile is being set. You walk in, you're like, this doesn't look great. This one grout joint here looks wider. Visually, it does not look great. But overall, the rest of it looks pretty good. There's just one little spot. But to fix it, it's going to be requiring to do like remove 15 tile and do it. And it's eating you up inside. Okay? Like you're like you're cussing the contractor, the tile contractor, your employee, whoever, because it's not perfect. Let that go and see what happens. If your client comes in and says, this looks amazing, everything's great, then you realize that that standard, that level of quality that was lowered is still acceptable enough for your clients. But if they come in and say, Brad, everything looks great, but this tile over here, this one grab joint does not look right. Can we fix that? Now you know where that threshold is of what is acceptable and not acceptable. Okay, so here's how I kind of, again, it's completely subjective, but on a scale of one to 10,10 being perfect, you need to be delivering somewhere around a seven quality on the scale. You can probably get away with a six and eight is not bad, but nine and 10 is not necessary. Okay, so if you can deliver around a seven quality on a zero to 10 scale and your clients are happy with that, like repeatedly your clients are all happy with that, then you know where that threshold is. And that should be the standard by which you set. So then you would set a standard of seven, you know, maybe six on some things. But you're telling your guys, hey, we're not looking for a 10. We're looking for a six or seven. You know, an eight's okay on certain things. And there's certain things, obviously, like the trim has got to be a little bit higher than the framing. You know, the framing can be a five and who cares, but the trim's got to be a seven or eight. Right. So there's different areas, even within your business and what you do that are acceptable and not, but overall, like an overall quality across the board, we need to be around a seven, maybe an eight on the high end. And you use that as a reference point for where your clients complain. If they complain, you fix it. It costs you a little bit money. Sure. But you know where the standard is now. Okay. That's the best thing you can do is actually lower your quality standard to the point to where your customers complain and then increase your standard at that point. That's kind of how you figure out where the threshold is.

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Hey, just a quick timeout from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day, or doing free estimates for people who are never going to hire you in the first place, I invite you to my private contractor community, The Profit Club, where contractors just like you are adding two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again. So if you're ready to increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools, then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about the profit club and see how I can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket. give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease

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and get you

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off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show.

23:53

Some of you are like saying, this guy is full of shit. You know, we always got to do a 10 no matter what. You're, I mean, you're exactly who I'm talking to. If you're disagreeing with me, that it has to be perfect. You are exactly who I'm talking to right now. you're the one that's going to suffer the most from this. Okay. There's another thing I want to talk about here. It's called the point of diminishing returns. So what's the negative impact of perfectionism? One, it costs you money. It costs you money through efficiency and time. So if I am going back to the tile shower scenario, if I have a tile shower where the grout joint is not perfect and I'm trying to debate, I need to make this perfect. I got to tear this whole wall out. It's going to add a whole nother day to the job, you know, eight hours of labor plus some material. I have to eat that because I'm not going to make money on that. I have to eat that, but I want it perfect. Okay. So client is completely happy with the way it is. If you would have just left it, they are over the moon. You're not happy. So you replace it. That is a point of diminishing returns, meaning. You're going above and beyond what is required by the customer standard to make it a great experience and or product. You're going above that. And so everything you do from that point on does not add any value whatsoever to the project in the customer's mind. And so that is a diminishing return because if a seven is acceptable, anything above a seven. is extra time and money spent that does not raise the quality or raise the value you're providing, therefore raising the money that you're making. At that point of diminishing return, you are now losing money on the job. And you're doing it for yourself. So don't kid yourself here. This is a you problem. It's not a customer problem. It's not even an employee problem. Most of the time, it's a you problem. So when you create these crazy requirements, you're essentially setting your employees and your subs up to fail all the time. Now, put yourself in an environment where you're constantly criticized by your superiors and you feel good about it. You're a perfectionist because you lived in that environment as a kid. More than likely. Now you want your employees to thrive in that environment. Did you thrive as a kid in that environment? More than likely, no. You have trauma now that you have to deal with. That's what you're doing for your employees and your subs. You're setting them up for failure because they can't consistently meet that on a regular basis. Even you have bad days. You can't expect your employees to be 100% on 100% of the time. It's just not possible. And that's where you set yourself up for failure yourself personally, because you create unrealistic expectations. And then you get mad when people don't meet them. This creates tons of anxiety in you. It creates a ton of frustration in you. If you're stressed out all the time because your guys are idiots and they have no common sense, it's a very good chance. that you have too high of a standard and or you don't know how to cultivate people and make them into good employees and ultimately good leaders. You're transferring your insecurities to them. Whenever I hired an employee one time as a helper, he came from the cook industry. He was a short order cook. And by the way, those guys are hard workers. If you're ever looking for a laborer or someone who works hard, go to the restaurant industry. and hire some cooks because those guys work in crappy environments, crappy conditions at crappy hours. They're just crapped on all the time. And so if they can withstand that, they're probably going to be doing pretty good for you as an employee. But he had a little bit of experience doing some maintenance and stuff. He didn't have a whole lot of experience, but I was hiring him as a helper, not a skilled position. But he came on, and about two months in, he's like, hey, Brad, can we have a conversation? I said, sure. Normally I do a 90 day, I would do a 90 day evaluation. I said, yeah, what's up? He sits down. He's like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. I'm like, what do you mean? Well, I mean, I'm just having a really hard time learning everything and like keeping up. Now I've said this before we did like handyman stuff and we also did remodeling and he was doing a lot of more of the handyman stuff. And so when you're doing that and you're constantly every day, you're doing something new. You know, one day you're cleaning gutters. The next day you're installing a door. The next day you're hanging pictures. The next day you're finishing drywall. The next day you're installing crown and trim and cabinets. Like you're doing all these different things. You never really get good at it. And so you leave each day feeling defeated because you tried something new that day. Obviously, when you do something new, you're not going to be good at it. And so you leave the day feeling like you didn't accomplish much. You feel like you're a failure. But when you create that environment, like in the terms of the types of services you do, which by the way, totally off topic, this is why you need to niche down. It makes everything easier. But when you're doing too many different things, it's hard for your team to get efficient at it, which means it's hard for them to actually feel good about what they do, be proficient, have confidence, and enjoy what they're doing. Because every day they're trying something new and usually failing at it. Who wants to go to work? environment where every day I'm going to leave the day feeling like a failure. Right? So that was a situation based on because we were doing too many different services, but you can do the exact same thing. If you have too high standards, even if you only do one thing, even if you are, if you just do painting services and that's it, all you do is paint. It's pretty, you know, there's a skillset there. That's easy to learn. If all you do is paint, but your standards are way too high. Then you're creating a point to where they're going to fail most days, you know, or at least in the beginning, like it may take them six months to a year to get to the level of requirement that you want. And before they ever get there, they're going to burn out and quit because who wants to come to work every day and feel like a failure? If you were in their shoes, you would quit. You would quit yourself, but you don't think about it from their perspective. All you think about is the work you're doing reflects on me and tells the world whether I'm a good person or not. So if you don't do perfect work and I get criticized for it, I feel like crap. Therefore, I'm going to make you feel like crap. And so we're just going to prevent all that. I'm going to have super high standards. Again, it is a pain avoidance type of scenario. You're doing it to avoid pain. Not because it actually benefits the customer, because it really doesn't. Remember, most customers are happy with a seven. They're thrilled, not happy, they're thrilled. Your seven is a 12 to them. So you're setting those high standards that aren't attainable, okay? When you do that, your employees are set up for failure almost every time. Now, let's finish up here by talking about some ways that we can start to dismantle perfectionism in ourselves and in our business. Number one, you set good enough goals. Now, I know some of you guys are cringing right now, but this is the process. You set good enough goals. Start aiming for done, not perfect. Okay? Perfect doesn't pay the bills. Progress does. Now, again, this is a process. It's not a I do it one time and it fixes everything. If you set for good enough, It's very possible that good enough doesn't meet the minimum standard. And so then you have to go back and fix some things. That's just part of the process. But we're starting off with a good enough endpoint, not a perfectionist endpoint, not a perfect endpoint. Okay, so ask yourself, if this were for someone else, what would be good enough for them? So in other words, your clients, what's good enough for them? And by the way, you can actually have conversations with your clients. to determine what level of quality they expect and then cater your good enough standard to match their requirement. Right. And so like that's, you can do that and to get an idea. Also we're always more forgiving of others than ourselves. Okay. So set it to where we're forgiving of others and ourselves. If you want to have yourself to a high standard, that's fine, but you can't expect everyone else to live to your standard. It's your standard. You created it for you. Like in terms of perfect, you can set standards for the business. But again, if you set them too high, people fail, they leave. It's that simple. What's more important to you? Having other people do the work or you doing all of the work? And there's a saying here where 80% done is better than none. If I can hire someone. who comes in and can do 80% of the work good enough, but they leave 20% that's not good enough, and I have to go in and fix that 20%, that is still 100% better than me personally doing all the work. I was talking with my client. He said he hired an elderly gentleman, and the guy says, hey, I can finish this up. They're installing a door or a window, and they had to do some caulking and setting the trim and stuff. And so the guy, he let the guy do that while he was doing something else. And he spent eight hours doing all the inside trim of these windows and doors. And when the job was done, the guy had to leave and he's like, no worries, I'll finish up. He goes in, the owner, the contractor goes in and he notices that, you know, there were a couple of nails that weren't set below the trim levels. It was just some minor detail things that were not, let's say up to standard. They were below standard, but the rest of it was good. The trim was installed. The joints were tight. Everything else was good. There was just a few missed things. And so he went in and he spent, you know,20 minutes or so fixing these things that the guy missed. And he was complaining that the guy's not good enough. And I'm like, do you hear what you just said? He was able to do eight hours worth of work that you didn't have to do. And then you only had to fix, spend 20 minutes fixing the things that he missed. You're telling me it's much better for you. to do all of that work, to do the extra eight hours of work so that you don't have to spend the 20 minutes fixing it. 80% done by someone else is better than 100% done by you. Even if that was a requirement on every job, even if that guy just couldn't have the ability to finish well at the end and you had to come in and spend an hour at the end of a project and fix everything. That is way better than you doing all of it. I'll take that. Sign me up every day for that. If worst case scenario, I had to go by the job site for the last hour of the day and finish everything to make it right. I'm still saving seven hours every day of my time. And you have to understand that it's still, that's still a win, but you're wanting it to be perfect. So you fire that guy and guess what? You're back on the tools, right? This is where it's like, well, I guess I just have to do everything. to make it right. You know what they say, everyone, nobody can work anymore. It's just better if you do it yourself. That's all bullshit, guys. That's bullshit. That is a cop-out for you not taking responsibility and acceptability and accountability for what's going on in you personally, emotionally, and you're projecting that on everyone else. If that's true, that you have to do everything yourself, there would be no employees in the entire world. Everything would just be done by the owners. So we know factually that that's not true. Because if it's true, it would be true for everyone. It's not true. It's you. You're the problem. You just won't accept that. Number two, limit the tweaking. Okay? Give yourself a time cap or revision limit. One review, then ship it. Every extra pass is usually just the ego. Here we go. Ego trying to protect itself. Diminishing return time is you protecting your ego. It is not adding value to the quality of the product or to the customer. So just give yourself a time. Hey, this whole bathroom looks like shit. I'm only going to dedicate one hour to fix as much as I possibly can. I'm going to start with the worst stuff and then work my way down. And when an hour's up, you're done. You just walk away. You got six things that you didn't get to. You think they look like crap. You want to tear out the whole bathroom or redo it. You want to fire everyone on your team because they're incompetent. You're pissed off. The customer comes home. You're preparing yourself for the worst information you can get. And the customer walks in and says, you guys are artists. I don't know how you do this. This is absolutely amazing. I'm a realtor. I've seen hundreds and hundreds of bathrooms. And I can tell you that this is the best bathroom I've ever seen in my entire life. Meanwhile, you're over there saying it looks like shit. Because most of the time, that is exactly what happens. The clients are over the moon. You feel like shit. That's a you problem. That's a perfectionist problem. But you won't work on yourself, though. You just keep blaming everything else and everyone else. You won't work on yourself because that's not fun. It's easier to blame everyone else. All right, I digress. Number three, reframe the mistakes. Mistakes aren't failures. If the grout joint isn't perfect, that doesn't mean you're a failure in life and you should quit and go do something else. It's just a mistake. You make hundreds of mistakes every day. You forgive yourself. Your employee makes one mistake. You want to fire them. That's ridiculous, guys. Mistakes aren't failures. They're data, right? Use them like a GPS. Wrong turn. Cool. Recalculate. Now you know what to do. Use mistakes as learning opportunities for your team. Number four, practice exposure. Force yourself to publish, post, send, complete something that isn't perfect. Start small. You'll survive, I promise, and get better and faster. If you can't, if the thought of like letting an entire project like that go, just like you lose sleep at night, start with something small. Start with one little thing that guys typically get wrong and let it go. Could be joints in the corner. You walk in, you go, oh my gosh, that's the worst joint I've ever seen in my entire life. Realistically, it's not. It's an eight out of 10, but you want a perfect, let it go. Just let it go and see what happens. That's it. Just start small. Five, talk to that inner critic. So I've been talking about the whole time. Your inner critic is what's doing this to you. When that voice says this isn't good enough, literally out loud, answer yourself and say, maybe it's not perfect. I'll give you that. But it's better than nothing or it's better than me doing the work. And that's good enough for now. You have to ask yourself, can I accept the six out of 10 quality work that my employee did? Because that's better. Getting a six out of 10 is better than me doing all the work. And the answer should always be yes, it's always better than you doing all the work. And by the way, I'm not talking about, you know, incompetent employees, people that suck, people that do crappy work. I'm not talking about that. Obviously, we have to find people that are competent. I'm talking about the ones that you are that are competent, that do good work, but you just expect perfectionism. That's the ones I'm talking about. Lastly, number six, focus on your impact, not your image. Again, ego protects the image. Perfectionism is about you. Impact is about others. Focus on serving, not impressing. You got to start dismantling this perfectionism, right? You have to start dismantling it. You have to realize it's not healthy. I mean, it can lead to heart disease and stress. I mean, all kinds of things. It's literally a disease. Perfectionism is a disease. And I always joke that I'm a recovering perfectionist. And I am. Like, I used to be that guy. Everything that I'm telling you, that was me. I did those things. And I went through the process of realizing that it doesn't matter. It's not important. The thing that triggered this for me that made me realize this, that opened my eyes, was I hired a guy. as a lead guy and he didn't have a ton of experience in construction. He was a handy guy, but he, he came from like a hump, the service industry. And he had a lot of experience as like a, you know, managing people and stuff. And so I brought a man, I mean, he could do the things. He just wasn't like a 20 year carpenter. And I said, Hey, go install this door for this guy. And, uh, it was a, it was a unique situation. There was some additional framing and things that had to be done on these, on the siding. And I said, hey, I want to make sure we do like multiple levels of caulking because this area where it was at was underwater quite a bit. When it would rain, there would be a little bit of standing water, not bad. But I just didn't want water like seeping in under stuff. So I was like, you know, do multiple layers of caulking in between like the siding and the trim and the two buys and all that stuff because we had to frame up this opening. So I just wanted like two or three levels of caulking as extra protection. Not that it needed it, but just as an extra. And I'm like, okay, I'm not looking for 10 quality here. Just go deliver a seven. He's like, no problem. He does the work. I don't go check on it because I couldn't. A few weeks later, we're back out there at this project for a different project, starting another project. And so I go and I check on the door. I go check on the door. Aesthetically, it looks great. It looks perfectly fine aesthetically. But I noticed that there wasn't some extra caulking on the outside and stuff. And so I said, hey, go grab your caulk gun and silicone. We're going to come down here. He's like, well, four. I was like, well, we're going to put some extra silicone on here. And he said, it doesn't need it. I'm like, I know. I just want to do it anyways. And so he was butthurt because he knew better than me. And so we go down there. It starts an argument. And he says, you know, you told me all the time that you want a level seven quality out of 10. This is the part that was the wake up. He's like, but you're, what you're telling me is a seven is actually a 10 out of 10. So in other words, my standards were higher than even his standards. So, you know, for me, a seven is like a 10 out of 10 for him. So if he, if you can't do better than a 10 out of 10 and I'm expecting it to be higher because my standards higher, he's never going to meet that standard no matter what. And that was a wake up. Now. That whole situation ended up me firing him because he just wouldn't do what I asked him to do. He literally argued and said, I'm not going to do it. I was like, well, if you don't do it, then you're fired. He's like, all right, he left. Like it was a bad fit. Like that was just a bad fit of an employee, but he still opened my eyes to this idea of having a standard that to me was a seven, but to him was a 10. You know, my seven was his 10. So if he delivered a seven, that would be like a five or four to me. Right. And so like that, that's where you're setting this unrealistic expectation for them. And you can't do that. And that was an eye opener for me to realize that I have to back off on some of this stuff. Now, that doesn't mean that we still, I still didn't go there and like do the extra thing that I wanted to do. That was a, that's a different scenario, but still it opened my eyes to this idea of being a perfectionist. And that's what I'm trying to get across to you guys. If you're constantly struggling, if you're constantly have anxiety, if you're constantly saying to yourself and to your spouse and you're complaining, these guys just don't have common sense. These guys just don't do good work. There's a very, very, very good chance that your perfectionism is what's causing all of the problems, not only for your employees. but for you personally, because everything comes back to you. So it's much better to have a 70,80% quality project where I don't have to do any of it or maybe very minimal amounts of it than it is for me to have to do everything. And you have to really kind of look yourself in the mirror and say, what's more important? Is it more important that everything is perfect, but I have to do so much extra work? or do I want to have a business that doesn't rely on me so that I can go do things that I want to do and enjoy my life? The whole reason we started a business in the first place is to have a better life for ourselves. What's more important to you? Having everything perfect where you have to control and be stressed out all the time or give up a little bit of perfectionism so that you can actually have a much higher quality life overall. You have to determine that. I hope this opens your eyes a little bit. I hope you guys start seeing that you probably are the problem in your business. If you have a hard time attracting, retaining employees because of this level of perfectionism, it affected me. I know it's probably affecting you and I hope this helps you kind of start that process. If this podcast was helpful, guys, do me a solid favor and go leave a review for me on your favorite platform. This is episode 200 and what are we on? I think it's 215, maybe 216. This is episode 216,216 episodes that I've done. The very least you could do as a thank you is go leave a review and honest review. If you think it sucks, leave me a one. I'm just asking you to leave a review. That's it. Five minutes out of your day, go leave a review on your favorite platform. That way other people can. can see it, it helps boost it, it helps get more people involved, and then it motivates me to want to do more episodes, right? So small favor, go leave a review. I'd appreciate it. And if you need help in your business, please, please, please always feel free to reach out to me, message me, text me, email me, go to my website, whatever. Smoke signal, I don't care, carrier pigeon, just reach out to me. I'm more than happy to see what we can do to help you. You know, I don't always like, by the way, I don't always like just instantly charge you for everything. I mean, I have people messaging me daily with one little question or thing, and I'm happy to, you know, respond and do the best I can. I'm short of like going into a full blown coaching session, but I'm more than happy to help you give you resources. You know, you can pick up my book, the podcast. I have Facebook group. I have tons of resources out there with free content. You just got to ask, guys. You just got to reach out. Just got to ask. I'm happy to help you. Thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate it. You know, enjoy the rest of your day. And remember, next time, guys, profit is not a dirty word.