EP24: Moving the Needle of Your Business

Oh, you're right. Jeff Olson. It's an easy read. It's powerful. It just talks about everything you do in your life. Like you're moving the needle one direction or the other. So it's not really static. You know, it's like, okay, I guess you could feel your engine of your vehicle and then park it in the driveway and not drive it. And then the needle for the engine, you know, the needle for your fuel is not going to move one direction or the other. But... If you're not driving that vehicle, the needle is actually ticking back super, super, super slow, right? Because if you didn't drive it for a year, that fuel would not be good. So you're actually tilted, you know, the needle's going in a certain direction, right? So it just makes me think about every little thing you do from, you know, what you eat, you know, the phone calls you make, the phone calls you don't make. It's ticking your needle forward in your business. And so that's really etched in my head. It's like, hey, what am I doing right now to help tick my needle forward, to tick things, to get progress going in the company? And if I just took the day off, the needle might be going backwards. Or if I don't make the phone call during that day, if I don't make my five sales calls in the day, my needle is actually going backwards. I know you read the book. I know you're a big fan of it. What does that make you think about?

Let's hope you get the test results you need. But some people that don't know anybody would be like, well, you still got a guy working. You're still ticking the needle forward in your business. But if you really know your numbers, if you're studying your business, you're working on your business, then you realize you probably need a certain amount of people working in the business to bring in a certain amount of income. That one guy is not going to bring in enough. So while he's still working in your business, some people might have the mindset, hey, the needle's ticking forward, but it's not because you need a certain amount of guys. taking the needle forward. So that's what I really want to impress upon with people.

I do now that you said it.

And there's your like, you're not working, you're not focused on ticking the needle for you. And so by default, you're ticking the needle back. And so I guess I really want people to like kind of, you know, have a reality check on that. And then I got some five things that always helped me reboot. recalibrate. And these five things kind of help me refocus to keep that needle moving forward. And if I find myself like slight edge, like I didn't work hard enough today, because life is like a graph. I mean, it's okay to have a little bit of downtime, but like that needle should be going up and then it can decline a little bit, but then it goes up again. Imagine like the stock market, we want it to continue to rise. And even if it falls for a day or two, you're still well above what you used to be. you know, a month ago or last year. So it can ebb and flow a little bit, but you should be focused on always managing that. Otherwise, you know, a month goes by, six months goes by, a year goes by, you get an autopilot and you're down. You know, you don't feel like it, but the needle is not in the right direction. You got to refocus and recalibrate and go.

I think a lot of young craftsmen, even old craftsmen that start their business and they get going, they're not real true entrepreneurs yet. They haven't really figured it out yet. And that's kind of a tough spot to get in. I remember when I first started, I thought I was doing great, but I wasn't focused on the business enough. Like you said, the numbers, getting taxes in order, all that stuff, you just get going and you're like, oh, I got to... You don't work on your business. All of a sudden you're in the business. It's been 364 days and you're like, oh crap, I got to pay taxes tomorrow. I got to figure this out. And so then suddenly if you get that pain enough, now you're like, I'm going to focus on it a little bit earlier this year. I mean, that's kind of the thing. And I guess that's down to a different level I was talking about. But if you're really looking to scale your business, if you're really looking to achieve some goals, part of that would be writing them down and then figuring out the little... What it takes to get in that direction, create a list and... Tackle it. Like you do with Asana. I haven't figured out Asana yet. I saw some things you're putting in there for me to do. I'm like, I gotta figure out this new system.

I mean, you should just, you know, you should write it on a note and then put it in and then mail it to me. And then I'll get the note and I'll open it up. I'm like, oh, Brad wants me to do this. Can we go back to the old school like that?

Hey, oh, I didn't figure it out actually. Melody figured it out. But that's going to be one of my steps that I'm talking about in ticking the needle. One of the steps. I mean, we've already almost covered a couple of them. And I don't know if we should just go in a certain order or just start talking about them.

All right, let me put this in four-wheel drive and let's carve a path. Everyone's got a to-do list and they're massive, right? So many things are in your mind. One of the things you need to do is just you need to focus on the critical tasks that need to be done to move you in the direction of your goal. And even if it's small things like that, but having some kind of list, a power list, not a to-do list. It could be a get shit done list, power list, critical list. do or die list. There's certain things that you want to get done. These things have to get done. Put deadline to them and make sure they get done. Win the day.

Yeah, that's great. That's like your whiteboard Asana, you know, right?

Okay. Well, and that takes me to the number two bullet point that I put down is like some micro steps. Because, I mean, let's break it down in a different fashion. Hey, I really want to move my business forward. I want to scale. I want to make more clients. I want to get more whatever, get more lead generation. So lead generation would be something that's important to you and you want to get it done, just like something you put on your board, your whiteboard, right? And then so you have to create the little micro steps to help that lead generation. So you might have a handful of micro steps that you want to tackle each day. So it's like, you're not gonna just wake up and go, I want lead generation and like... you're going to just all of a sudden, it's all going to happen, right? Sometimes it might be like, hey, I got to call a guy and find out more about Google ads. I don't know him well enough. You know, a micro step would be just picking up the phone and getting a contact, calling one of your peers in your peer group, you know, going on Google, trying to find someone who can help you with it or whatever, just these micro steps. And if you just get that one little thing done that day, and another one might be like, hey, I got to call my graphic designer and, you know, get, I need new logos for my truck. That's going to help me get new leads. So if you have like five little micro steps to get you closer to generating more leads, which would help you scale your business and grow, then that would be one of the little micro steps. Too many people, you can't eat an elephant all in one sitting. You got to do it a bite at a time. So everyone's heard that saying, you just got to find out these little micro things. And so set the power list and then create these little micro things to do. And it might be like, the power list is... is call those five little things. Get online, call a peer, call the graphics guy. All those things just have to be listed out and you have to attack them.

Scheduling. That takes me... That's time blocking. That's the next one that I have on here.

One of the things you said is like, making the phone call, it could be something simple. That's the micro step mentality right there. I just got to make this phone call and get the ball in the air. Got to get the ball in the air. I'm going to call my graphics guy and say, hey, I need something new fresh for the truck. This is what I want to do. You're on the phone for five minutes, four minutes of your BSing about what's going on, how you been. And then one minute of like, this has to get done. So that gets done. But the bigger, more important things, they might need time blocking. And that's one of the other bullet points that I wanted to mention is time blocking certain things. So like, you know, this podcast, we time block it. It's on the calendar. You know, we get it done. It'd be easy just not to do it if we didn't block the time. And we set it up as a non-negotiable and we just do it. So like, if you wanted to, you know, create a new ad copy on your website, you know, even if you're not doing the website, maybe you have someone else doing it for you. You've hired someone. But you still have to put out the content. You still have to create photographs. Maybe you hire the photographer, you make the phone call and get the photographer. But the reality is you got to sit down and create the ad copy. And that might take time, like the SLPs. So you got to block the time. Hey, I'm going to get this done. And sometimes if you're lucky, you can block that in the middle of your 7 to 3.30 time. But sometimes that time blocking is like, hey... I have to do this after hours. I got to get everything else done. I got all my other responsibilities, my obligations, father, son, dad, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, everyone's in bed from nine to 930. I'm going to put in a little time to get this done. So sometimes it takes that kind of stuff, that kind of time blocking to make it happen.

Well, that definitely keeps you focused. And when you do that, you can block time for that power list, those times to get things done, right? AM, like if you can get your, your five little things that you really have to get done before noon, you're in a good spot. You're winning the day. You've already ticked the needle. And then you're chasing everything else. It's like, just like you said, if it's easy to do, it's easy not to do. And the thing is, what I find is from seven to five, for me, running 15 people, it's like, I'm constantly the sounding board. I mean, I have a pretty good team. I have pretty good staff. Even if I have 15 people and they're all super tight and they only need me for 10 or 15 minutes a day times 15, it's like all those time slots are coming at me. And so I've learned to set it up and go, hey, don't even talk to me from this time to this time. This is my production hours. I'm working with a crew. I'm making sure things are tight, ordering, doing those kinds of things. When I can pull my head up and look around for a minute from 10 a. m. to 11, I can meet with you and I can meet with you. I can block 15 minutes. I'll block an hour if you need it, whatever. So that goes into what you're talking about and time blocking. You can block them for whatever. For me, personally, I don't want to block, okay, I'm going to go to the bathroom at this time to that time, right? I mean, I know for me, I'm not a C personality. I can see a C personality. It's like, okay, I'm going to block out 15 minutes for this and I'm going to do that. And then I kiss me an hour and then I can block out my drive time. It's like, I don't want to do it that tight, but it's really critical to me to block these other time slots. Otherwise, I don't get that stuff done because there's just too many people coming at me.

The important thing, the important thing about this is, first of all, a lot of people don't know what Calendly is. And let's just, let's just put out there. I know you think everyone knows this stuff.

Well, but so it's, it's something that connects to your phone, you know, and, and. The time blocks are blocked and you can give it to your clients. But the cool thing is Brad just knows, hey, from 8 to 4, I'm available for discovery calls. And it's blocked out for months at a time. But if he says, hey, I'm going to have lunch with my wife on such and such date. We're going early. We're going to do something. He can put that in the calendar and then it blocks it out from Calendly. So then there's no conflict there. So having that one calendar and setting up those time blocks is important. It doesn't mean that from 8 to 12 or the rest of the Tuesdays of his life, he's making sales calls because if something else important comes up, he can block that out on his calendar and then it cross-references it with Calendly. So it's things like this. These kind of systems and this kind of technology helps you with those kind of things.

Yeah. So, I mean, the time blocking is critical because look, before I started doing time blocking... I know what people are going to think. They're like, oh, I don't have time to learn that. It's a learning curve. And I'm not going to... I'm really tight. I know all my stuff. I get my shit done. Don't worry. But the problem is you think you're tight, but you're not. If you really audited yourself, you could get tighter and you could move the needle forward faster. I'm not saying you're never going to get where you want to go, but you might get there 10 years earlier and then have a lot of time left to do a lot more and bigger things. And so the time blocking is pretty critical. And like I said, I think people, I think a lot of entrepreneurs think, I'm just so busy, I don't have time for that. But it actually creates more time to be able to do these other things and you become less stressed out. So you're healthier mentally and from all that stuff. So the time blocking is a great way to... Because for me, I remember I would feel guilty because I couldn't get to everything. So at the end of the day, I was like... scrambling around trying to get to everything. At the end of the day, I would literally lay in bed and feel guilty because I didn't get to everything. And with time blocking, I feel like, hey, I blocked it. I was super efficient. I audited myself. I did everything I can today. I'm only human. The rest of them will have to get to tomorrow or the next day, or maybe I'll hire someone else.

Right. That's awesome sarcasm. Well, this comes back to delegating too. So there's another bullet point. So you got the power list, you got the micro steps and then time blocking to make those things happen, right? And then the delegating is a big factor. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs and craftsmen turning businessmen, they're all control freaks and they think they can do everything better, faster and all that stuff. But when you start to delegate... spread some of those responsibilities across people, that becomes a force multiplier too. And you get where you need to go faster. Yeah,

Yeah, for sure. And there's the guilt factor right there too. He's probably... I bet you if you audited his time, I bet you he's losing a lot in certain places. And so what happens is he starts overlapping certain things that he technically is trying to time block time with you and other subs to make everyone happy. But then he's also overlapping his phone call block. So if someone's calling between 1130 and 1230 and you don't take the phone call right away or it's not gone to your dispatch, oh, let me get a message. He's out to lunch. If you can't do that, people aren't just going to freak out and go, oh, well, it's 12 o 'clock. I called him. He didn't call me back. I mean, he didn't answer the phone call. I'm going to call someone else, right? So that's me assuming that that's kind of what happens, but I can see that that's happening. Shit, I've done that before. And for now, there's only a handful of people that I will take the phone call, no matter what. There's only less than five people that I will literally drop what I'm doing and answer the phone. That's if I don't have the phone shut off.

Yeah, mostly. You're number six.

This is important to feedback on this story because in the beginning, it was probably okay. He'd probably get a call once a day. I got to take this. It was important. And then it was twice a day. And then it was once an hour. And then it's like, hey, people are taking their lunch break. They want to try and catch them on lunch. And since he would always take those calls, all of a sudden it's scaled to a point where he trained himself to handle it that way. That was just his, that was his SOP. That's his standard operating procedure.

See, that's what I'm saying. The needle was ticking forward for him. It was ticking forward and he was growing, right? But then it hit this wall. I mean, this is a moving target. I've talked about that before. I said it once. I said it a thousand times. Business is a moving target and you have to be able to make changes quickly and move along. And so he just kept going that way. He should have made some changes. He should have started time blocking. He should have left him voicemail that said, hey, if I don't take your call, I could be at lunch or with another client. Just please leave a message. We'll get back to you within the hour. Little things like that, the moving targets changing. He could have done some things like that, but he didn't. He just was in it and so deep that the needle suddenly wasn't ticking forward anymore. It started ticking backwards.

Yeah, that's tough.

So this is funny. I mean, there's the delegating thing, right? So there's the bullet that I want to talk about. It's like delegate invoicing to someone. So as soon as you get to a point where you become the holdup, you're holding everything up. That's when you start to really need to be looking at delegating some part of your business to where either that becomes quicker because you love invoicing or whatever, or you don't love invoicing, you delegate it to someone else who can get it done. So it's interesting to me because he actually thought... He was taking the needle forward. Hey, I'm going to take these guys to lunch. He actually thought like he was doing a good thing, you know, and it probably worked for him for years, but then it hit a wall and then it started, it's like started, it bounced off the wall and here you guys got upset by it. And then the needle went backwards instead of it going forwards, but he was actually thinking he was going in the right direction. Meanwhile, it was going horribly wrong.

That could be a shitty situation, bro.

But on Sunday night, it's not your problem, right?

Yeah.

That can wait till tomorrow.

You said Cindy. Is that the new Karen for you?

Cindy, that's a good one. So back to delegate. Delegate or stagnate. That's always stuck with me. I don't know where I heard that. It's like, you got to delegate or you're going to stagnate. So I wanted to leave that one on there. The other step and probably we'll just call this the final step in what I think is like five little things to help you stay focused on taking the needle forward is to create some accountability by sharing some of your goals. Just by sharing your goal with someone, just by telling someone you're going to do that, it raises the chance that you'll actually do it like 25%.

Yeah. Well, just writing it down, it goes up a certain amount. Telling someone it goes up a certain amount. Creating a deadline that you shared with someone makes it go up. Because the last thing I want to do is meet up with you again and go, Oh, hey, tell me about that new... lead generation thing that you got going on. You're like, oh yeah, well, I didn't do it. But if I don't tell you, then there's no guilt factor that's going to press me to do it. I don't want to look like a loser to you. So I'm going to get it done.

I mean, that's one of my favorite things about our peer group. is that we can jump on there and say, hey, this is where I would like to tick the needle. And this is how I plan on doing it. And then you get feedback from people going, hey, I did that once. It didn't work. I made this adjustment and it worked really well. And now all of a sudden you're like, you're vibing off it, right? But I think that's one of the things I love about communities. I mean, I've loved that for years and years and years, having those kinds of communities and groups. And that's one of the things I love about the Profit Club and the Profit Group.

I'll be pushing like five, five. I'll be pushing like seven, three. What do you mean seven, three? How do you get seven, three? Like, oh, I did extra. Do some extra curricular work. Do some extra bonus stuff. Extra points. But what I'd like to know about that is like, you're calling them goals, but like the bigger goal, like these are the micro things to get to the big goal. And I want to make sure people realize that because I think I'm understanding it correctly, but you know, you set the big goal and you have the three things you want to do every day to get to that goal. And that's what you're sharing with each other in the accountability thing that ticks the needle forward to get to that big goal.

So what if one of the action steps is like, don't drink beer? And so if you don't drink beer, do you accomplish a goal?

What's wrong with that?

I'll drink to that. So, I mean, that's it, man. I mean, I don't know if we kind of went out of order, but I mean, those are the things that you can really do to tick the needle. I really want to highly recommend that book, Jeff Olson, The Slight Edge. They can get it on our website. Tell them how to get to that book.

It's a really good read. Because I mean, actually, it's a book that if I'm recommending a book to a contractor, that'll be a book that I give them to. Because I think it's pretty easy to get through, but it's super powerful. Sometimes the easy reads are, they're crap. But this is a super easy read and super powerful. It's just like, it gets you home. So I just want to make sure that the people that know about that book, write it down. You can find it on our tools of the trade on the website and some other books that Brad and I recommend. But yeah, man, get your power list. Think about of the goals that you want to get to. Create the micro steps. Time block it out to get them done. Delegate anything you can because if you don't delegate, you're going to stagnate. And then I think probably one of the most important things is share those goals. Kind of create some accountability. Even if you just share them. You get this inner monologue going on that you want to get it done because you don't want to look like a loser to your peers. So it just, it creates a little bit of accountability. And so those are really the five things that I think people need to just think about day in and day out every day.

Yeah. And if you guys want some tough love, really, really tough love, hit me up and I'll get you Brad's cell number. Yeah. Yeah. I'll share Brad's cell number with you and then you can start texting him your action steps. Because if you don't hit the number, you're going to get an ass kicking, a whooping,

verbal lashing.

All right.

Don't start, Brad. Okay.

Thank you so much for spending time with us tonight. Check it out, man. We're really vibing over in our groups. You got our free group. You just have to enter a couple of questions and we'll get you on in there. It's the Profit Group over on Facebook. And for our paid coaching group, it's called the Profit Club. If you want to learn more about that, head on over to Hammer and Grind. It means a lot to us if you just take the time to rate and review. And we want you to make the world a better place because, you know, contractors are kind of screwing some shit up and we want to help them out. And you can make the world a better place by sharing the podcast with them and letting them get into our click. And they're going to make us get better and we're going to make them get better. Until next time, we'll catch you on the download. Have a great day.