Why do you crush it at 7 a. m. yet by 4 p. m. you're making really dumb decisions? And why do you avoid special tasks that need attention like hiring, sales, ordering materials? It's not because you're lazy. It's because you're mentally depleted. Hey, it's Brad here. It's 2026 and you're still using a tape measure and grid paper to do your drawings. That's why I'm excited to tell you about today's sponsor, iGUIDE. With the iGUIDE Planix R1 camera and laser system, you can capture an entire home in about 45 minutes. All of your measurements, photos, and a detailed floor plan all at once. No hand sketches, no guessing, no more. Was that wall 10 foot? Or was it nine foot? Or, oh man, I forgot to measure the window offset. You just hit start and walk away. That's it. You're starting the job with accurate as-builts. And you can export straight to DXF, DWG, or RVT files so you and your team can get to work immediately. Miss something? Well, you don't have to worry about that because it's all right there in virtual land waiting for you. This is how you avoid costly mistakes. This is how you reduce change orders. And this is how you run a tighter operation. And more importantly, it's how you protect your margins. If you're serious about operating like a pro in 2026, it's time to upgrade. Go to hammerandgrind. com forward slash iGUIDE. That's I-G-U-I-D-E to order your iGUIDE Planix R1 camera today and start running your jobs the right way. Hey, welcome back to the show. On this episode, we're going to be talking about decision fatigue. And I'm going to read this here. It says the deteriorating quality of decisions after a long session of decision making. And that's what plagues most of us as contractors is that we're making hundreds of decisions every single day. And as the day goes on, our mental depletion goes lower and lower and lower. And so we end up making worse and bad decisions by the end of the day. So we're going to go through this. This is really important. This is a good topic. I've certainly suffered from this. And we're going to talk about what causes this, some things we can do to fix it. And hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll be able to tackle this problem head on and make some significant progress in your mental depletion and the brain battery, if you will. We don't want to deplete our battery. By 1 p. m., we want it to last all day, right? So here we go. What is decision fatigue? Well, I just told you the kind of the definition, but let's tie it directly to what contractors are. It's change orders, material substitutions, employee issues, schedule juggling, vendor problems, money stress, problem after problem after problem. All day long, you're solving problems. And what that, you know, it makes us feel really good. when we can solve problems all day, when people come to us, hey, Brad, I got this problem. I need your help. And you can just rattle something off real quick. And it's like this earth shattering, you know, new concept. And it's like, oh, my gosh, it's so great. You're the best, Brad. I can't believe I get to work for you. And you're so amazing. Like, that's the feeling that we get whenever we're solving problems. It's energizing. It makes us feel important. It makes us feel smart. Okay. The problem is, is that when you run a business, especially when you add more staff and more complexity to your business, you will hit a mental wall that will prevent you from making smart decisions in your business. And I was watching something the other day, I can't remember what it was, but mental decisions, like mental, you know, like when you have mental stress or mental decisions, it actually drains your body more than physical. So like physically, you might be able to work 12,16 hour days. But if you're having to constantly do mental gymnastics where you're solving problems and jumping back and forth, it will drain you. Not only does it drain you mentally, it drains you physically. So you have the double whammy. When you're working physically, you're really just draining yourself physically. Mentally, you're not draining yourself that much. But when you are draining yourself mentally, it affects your physical as well. And that's why some of you, when you get home at 9,10 o 'clock at night, I mean, you're just dead tired. Like you just... sit on the couch and fall asleep immediately. It's because you've been having this decision fatigue on top of, you know, possibly work on the tools still. So what is, what does decision fatigue look like? And these are things that I did. By the way, I talk about this all the time. I'm not immune to any of these things. I've done all the stuff I talk about. I am the poster child for everything you should not do in your business. Sometimes people say like, what's your qualifications to actually? you know, help me in my business. It's like, cause I've done everything wrong. Even if I not, even if I don't have the ability to tell you what to do, I can certainly tell you what not to do. Right now I do have the ability to tell you what to do, but from a, at least from a don't do this perspective, I've done all of it. I've made all of those decisions. So you don't have to, by the way, that's the whole purpose of getting coaching is that you don't have to redo the same mistakes that I've done. And you guys experience this too whenever you hire a new person and you know something, you know, you know something about what you're doing because you have so much experience doing it. And then your employee goes out and makes the stupid decision that costs you five, six, you know, a thousand, $600,000. And you're like, that was so stupid. Why did you do that? You should know X or Y or Z. Well, why would they know that? They've never done it before, right? So you can rely on other people who have done that to help you. Prevent that. But let's back back to the decision fatigue. These are things that we do, and we're going to tie in how this really affects our business. So what does decision fatigue look like in contractors? It's underpricing jobs late at night. If you're doing estimates,9,10 o 'clock at night, that is by far the absolute dumbest time of the day you can do an estimate. I mean, it's the worst possible time that you can do an estimate. But Brad, that's the only time I have available. because I have to work all day on the tools and I have to do this and this. I only have nine to 10 after I put the kids down. I don't care. Figure it out. It's the worst time of the day you can do estimates is from like nine to 10,11 o 'clock at night. The worst time. Your brain is dead. And that's when you make the dumbest decisions when estimating. You sell the job and then you're like, oh crap, I didn't even put in the estimate that I needed to rent a mini skid steer. You know, that's going to cost me a couple thousand dollars because I didn't have any estimate. I got to figure out now how I can turn it into a change order so I don't lose my ass on it. That's because you made a decision by doing it when you're at your worst, right? Don't do that. Saying yes to bad clients. That's another thing that happens. Avoiding hard conversations. This happens every single day. Avoiding hard conversations. Buying tools impulsively. Man, I can't even tell you how many times I've bought. I still buy stuff impulsively. Last night I was on the Internet trying to justify buying a new gun. Like it's just out of the blue. Eating like garbage. Yeah, that's a big one. You know, you get those gas station stops in the morning, get the crappy donuts and the coffee and honey buns, ice honey buns. the 20 ounce Mountain Dew for breakfast. You know what my breakfast was when I was in the military and long and even when I, after I got out of the military, my breakfast every day was a 20 ounce Mountain Dew and an iced honey bun. That was my breakfast of choice. I'm laughing at myself how stupid these things were. Eating like garbage, drinking more, you know, that's where all the bad habits come in. You know, hey, you know, let me stay up till one o 'clock in the morning. Oh, you know what? Help me do that. Let me do, let me snort some Coke. Yeah, let me take some meth. That'll help me stay up longer so I can do all these estimates at the worst possible time of the day to get the worst possible result that I can have for my business. Sounds like a great plan. You procrastinate on marketing decisions. I see this every day. You get snappy at your family. Like you actually start taking it out on your family because you're depleted and you know, they're... pushing you for this, dad, can you do this? And honey, can you do this? And you're just like, I don't have another ounce of energy because I've just been making decisions all day. I'm worn out. That's decision fatigue. It's completely preventable. And you are the captain of the ship. You are the firefighter here. You're the arsonist and the firefighter. You're doing both. You have complete control over it. If you're trying to pass this off like, yeah, but you don't know my employees are dumb. Well, you hired them and you didn't train them properly. That's your fault. So don't pass that buck on to someone else. Yeah, but my subcontractors, they suck. You hire your subs. Well, my vendors, you use the vendors. Like it's always your fault. You're never going to justify or give me a good enough reason as to why it's not your fault. So just own it. Just own it 100%. Be a man, step up, own it. And then let's get through it and fix it, right? That's the simplest and fastest way forward. As long as you're still blaming other people, you will not fix the problems in your business. Period. I mean, that right there is worth the time of this episode. As long as you keep blaming other people for your problems, you are giving up control of solving those problems. So let's talk about it right now. Let's own it and let's figure out how to move past it and actually start making some big changes in your business. So why does this happen? Like why are contractors vulnerable? to decision fatigue. Well, it's because you have no structure in your business. You have no SOPs. You have constant interruptions all day long. You have emotional pressure from your family. I got to provide for my kids. My daughter wants to take ballet lessons and it costs, you know, a thousand dollars a month to go do that. And my son wants to do travel baseball and that costs this and I, we don't, we're not doing very well and all this emotional and financial pressure to perform. Right. And then you have a decision responsibility for everyone else. your employees, your customers, everyone. Everyone wants you to make the decision. And it is your responsibility to make sure that it's done right. But it's not your responsibility to make all the decisions. And that's what we're talking about here. It's offloading decisions through different things like SOPs and systems in your business and or training, okay? And or signing responsibility. So... You know, you have to be the CEO, the project manager, the sales rep, the HR, the estimator, the therapist, the firefighter, like I was telling you before. You have to do this role switching all day long. You know, it could be, it's different for everyone. But, you know, you might be waking up at 6.30 in the morning to a text message from your employee saying, hey, boss, I, you know, I'm sick. I can't come in today. And then now you have to start making decisions. Well, who's going to cover for John? You know, nobody else is going to be able to because they're on this job and this and this. I guess I'm going to have to go work on the tools today. And then you had a you had a 9 a. m. meeting with a new marketing company because, you know, you need leads. And so you're on the job side hammering and swinging and doing all this work. And then you stop for 15 minutes to get on this call for marketing. And they throw you a really good, you know, too good to be true pitch. And you're already, you know,15,20 decisions into the morning. And they're like, hey, we're going to make this super easy for you. We're going to really help you out. And you're like, that's what I need. I need relief from all this decisions and I need leads. So yes, let me sign up for, you know, $5,000 a month marketing package. And then right there, because you made a bad decision, because of all of this decision fatigue, you just signed yourself and locked yourself into a contract that you can't get out of and they're not going to perform. Okay. And then you're going out throughout the day, taking sales calls, doing all these things, constant interruptions, constant, constant, constant interruptions. Whenever you use tasks, by the way, when you task switch, it takes roughly 20 minutes for your brain to fully lock back into that task. Not, not one minute, not two minutes,20 minutes, scientifically proven tests have been done. It takes about roughly, it can vary a few minutes, but it's about 20 minutes to go from full focus. to switching to a new task to achieve full focus is a 20-minute timeline. And you're switching back and forth 15 times in one hour. That's why you're not productive. The job doesn't get done if you're still on the tools because you got to take sales calls and order materials and talk to this sub and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you're there for eight hours, but you're only working for six, right? Or five or whatever, because you're task switching all the time. And if you're not on the tools, if you are running your business, you're still doing other things, right? As well as things you shouldn't be doing, which is like scrolling social media and mind numbing activities because you're trying to escape all of the decision fatigue that's going on. You take that little extra lunch. I'm the owner, man. I should be able to take a two hour lunch if I want. A hundred percent, I agree with you. I agree with you. You should be able to take the whole day off. It's your business, but that's not why you're doing it. You're taking a two hour lunch because you need to escape. You don't want anybody calling you. Right. You're just but you're justifying it and asking it under the of the guise of like you're the owner. You should be able to do that. I know this is true. I know if you're listening to this right now, you're probably shaking your head in the green because I know that you're doing this because, again, I did the same thing. What's the hidden cost of decision fatigue? What's the hidden cost? I'm going to break it down into three different buckets. There's financial costs, there's leadership costs and there's personal cost. So financial cost is this is you're discounting jobs. to just get it done or to close it rather, not get it done, but to close it. You know, the calendar is getting a little weak. It's getting a little thinned out. You need some work. Customer really wants to hire you. They said your bid was 20,000. Another bid was 16,000. They want you to try and match it. And you're like, well. I really need this job. So yeah, I'll match it or I'll knock two grand off or whatever. This happens. I mean, the clients in the profit club, we talked about this this week and last week, and I usually ride their ass when they do that. I usually give them shit because it's like, stop doing that. You're having an emotional, you're making an emotional decision, meaning you're making a data-driven decision emotionally because you're basing it on how you feel emotionally, mentally drained instead of having a system. and relying on data to make that decision. Happens all the time, even to the best of us. Nobody's immune to this, by the way. Like, even if you have everything in place, you can still have decision fatigue because it's just the happenstance of when decisions have to be made. So the best of us can still have decision fatigue, but the difference is people that understand it know that they can control it, and then they know to wait on making important decisions. until they actually are in a better position. That's the difference. People that don't understand this concept, they make bad decisions when they shouldn't make a decision at all. People that do understand this don't make a decision and, you know, don't make a bad decision until they wait until they have, they're in their best shape, their best fit, the best energy before they make that difficult decision. And then they're able to make a more clear and correct decision. That's the difference. It's being able to identify this and then shifting versus not even being aware of what's happening. Okay. Financial costs, discounting just to get it close, poor hiring decisions. Brad, I just got to have help. I just need help. I got six jobs waiting for me. Customers are screaming at me. I got to get these jobs done. I got to find some people. You know, if they're breathing, I'll hire them. If you've ever done that, you know that that's the stupidest thing you can do. I had this conversation yesterday. I did a launch call yesterday with a new client in the Profit Club. Anytime a new client comes in, we do a launch call. I have them send me their P &Ls. I have them job costs. I have them do a bunch of financial stuff. We get on a call. It's usually an hour, hour and a half long where we dive into their business so I can understand what's going on, figure out where those decisions are and how we can best move forward to help them. And so yesterday was week two. They joined two weeks ago. Yesterday was week two, which is our accountability call. And while we were talking, he's like, you know, I need to, I want to get off the tools. I want to transition from being on the tools to being a general contractor and using subs. I'm like, cool, we can do that. However, you need to start calling subs today, even if you have no job sold. Because what happens is when you need the sub, you are in emergency mode and you will hire the wrong subs because you're trying to solve a problem. That is a time sensitive problem. If you hire subs today when you don't need them, I don't mean hire, I mean like vet them out and find them. If you go out and you start looking for them today and you may need them in six weeks, you can have your entire sub list built or at least the initial list put together before you start your first job. But what happens is we sell. a $60,000, $80,000, $200,000 kitchen remodel, and it's the biggest job we've ever sold, and all of a sudden I need to hire people or I need to find a new sub. We've never done tile before. We're doing tile, so I got to go find a tile sub. The job starts next week. Let me go find a tile sub. How many of you have done that? I'm raising my hand if you're listening. Those are all stupid things that we do because we wait, and we wait because we're fatigued from making decisions all the time. So knowing that you can start ahead of time, spend the time that's necessary to find the right sub, you can avoid that problem later on. So poor hiring decisions, missed bids, you know, oh crap, I forgot I was supposed to get that. I told that customer I'd have that estimate to him by the end of the day. Well, it's, you know, it's 11 o 'clock at night. Let me stay up and do it. That way I can at least say, you know, it's the end of the day and I can send it to him at 11.59 p. m. Where do you think that shows to the client when you do that? When they look and see what time the email was sent at 11 to 59 p. m., what do you think you're telling the client? You're telling the client that you wait till the very last minute and that you're not going to be a good hire. They shouldn't hire you. You realize that everything you do is sending a signal to your clients and other people that you work with. Every single thing you do sends a signal. You ignore those because it's like you. You're like, well, I told him I was going to get to him by the end of the day. I got it to him by the end of the day. You would be far better off to send them an email at 5 p. m. and be like, hey, Steve, so sorry. They got away from me, had some issues to take care of. I'll have this estimate sent over to you first thing in the morning. You know, you'll have it in your inbox by 10 a. m. It's far better to do that than stay up till 11 o 'clock at night to do that estimate because you told them you're going to have it done today. People are understanding and they will give you grace if you tell them and you explain what's going on, right? But you made that bad decision because you were decision fatigued and you thought that that was the best thing to do. Overcoming or overcommitting capacity. Now, this is a different topic I'm not going to get into, but most contractors fall into one of two categories. They sell everything they can possibly get their hands on, right? And then they figure out how to build it later on. So like they overcommit and then they just figure out how to build it and they give every or all their customers a terrible experience. They go to the other side where it's like, well, I want to make sure that I have everything that I need, all the subs, all the employees before I go sell jobs, because I don't want to be in a situation where I don't have the help to do it. And so then you increase your overhead so that you can go out now and try to sell jobs. So people fill and fit into one of those two categories. And I can tell you right now, if you had to pick one, if I had to pick one. I would probably pick the over committing side more so than the under committing side only because it puts some pressure on you, which is good. We don't want too much pressure, but it puts some pressure on you and it allows you, it forces you to actually take action. So for some people, you need pressure to take action. If you don't have enough pressure, you don't take action. you do procrastinate. That's if I was forced to make one of those two choices. You can be in the middle if you have the right systems in place. Also, financial cost is not raising prices. Again, I need this job. Let me discount it. It's going to hurt me by not getting the right margins. The second one was leadership costs, inconsistent standards, emotional reactions, avoiding accountability, losing respect. This happens all the time. Just because you're a boss. Just because your name is on the side of the truck, just because you write the checks does not make you a good leader whatsoever. It just means you own the business. You're in charge of them. That doesn't make you a good leader by default. So whenever you, you know, you show up to a job site and it's not the way you wanted it or it's not the way you expected it and you throw your hat down and you start cussing and running around and you're pissed off and throw a hissy fit, it's extremely unprofessional. And you're, again, you're broadcasting to your team that you can't control yourself. And a lot of that is because you're fatigued and you just snap. Like you're just, it's just one more thing. It's the 240th thing today that's gone wrong, decision you had to make, and you just snap and take it out on them. So you have those emotional reactions. When you have an employee that you know is underperforming, but you need him because he knows how to do the work and you avoid that conversation, Right. And you avoid holding them responsible. That can happen because you have decision fatigue because you're like, man, if I if I go to him and say, hey, you're not performing, step it up. He might quit. And then I'll be really in a world of hurt because then I'll have to go fire, you know, find somebody to take his place. And I don't want to do that, even though that may be the right decision. You don't do it. You don't make the decision at all. Well, if I don't make the decision, hopefully it is just it is just fix itself on its own. That's a decision fatigue problem. Personal costs is irritability. Brain fog, poor health habits, burnout, marriage tension. You know, the poor health habits, like I was telling you, the coffee and the donuts every morning, the Mountain Dews and the Honey Buns every morning, poor health decisions. You can get away with that when you're 22 years old, not so much when you're 42, right? So you need to make it clear, decision fatigue doesn't show up as in I'm tired, like physically tired. It shows up as why does my life feel out of control? Now it can make you tired for sure. But when you feel like you're living in chaos, when it feels like every day is just chaos, it's because you actually are living in chaos. You've created your own chaos by not having this, you know, systems, by not having processes, by not giving responsibility, by not delegating. Like you've created your own process. You've created your own prison by avoiding these things. So here's the thing that you understand. The root cause, it's not the magnitude of the decisions you have to make where you have to make a bunch of really tough decisions. It's that you're making too many decisions and they can be very little decisions. So it's from, you know, what time are we starting today, boss? To where is that tool at? Or who's picking up the material? And who's calling the client? And what's the process for this? And where do I... go to get this? And how do I apply for time off? And why, you know, how do I log into this phone app, this new software you bought? And, uh, you know, we don't have anything. We don't have any caulking in the, in the van. Where do you, what do you want me to do? It's all of those little micro decisions that you're making throughout the day. They just wear you out. Just wear you out. 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 it can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket. give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you 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. So what are some solutions? This is where you can start bringing some authority into your own life and then through that into your business. Okay. By the way, most of the stuff that I'm talking about is a you problem. Like it's a you. personal problem. It's not a business problem. It just manifests itself in the business. In other words, because you don't have your shit together, you push that onto your business and then your business pushes back onto you, magnifies it. You're putting your shit into the world, into the business, and your business says, okay, let me 3x that for you and then give it right back to you. So everything we're talking about today is a you problem. It's not a business problem. It's not a construction industry problem. It's a you problem. You need to understand this and you need to fix it. So what's some solutions? You just standardized the start time. Done. You standardize pricing structure. You standardize job types. You standardize onboarding process. You standardize truck setup. You standardize weekly meetings. You just standardize everything in your business. But Brad, I have to do 15 different trades. I mean, you know, one call does it all. We have to do roofs and decks and fences and landscape and kitchens and bathrooms and windows and doors and siding and foundation repair and everything. We have to do everything so we can make money. When I hear someone say that, I know instantly that your life is pure chaos because there's no way you can have processes for... 15 different services. Now, if you've been in business like 40 years and you started with one and processed it and standardized it, and then you added another and standardized it, yeah, you can do that. But that's 99% of you don't fall in that category. 1% of you have that level of organization. So just start standardizing stuff. One thing I did in my business, I used to have my employees, they would take the van home and I would let them drive to the job site from their house in the morning. The problem was, you know, this week we're working over here on the east side. Next week we're working on the north side. And the week after that, we're working on the south side. And they live in one of those locations. And so they would show up at different times because they're used to just having like a 20,30 minute drive time. But then they, with the job as an extra 10 minutes out, they don't leave 10 minutes early. They get there five minutes after. You know what I did? I said, screw it. Now we're going to keep the vans at the shop. You're going to come to the shop every day at this time. You started at 730. You're going to get here. You're going to get your vehicle, get your stuff you need, and then get out the door. And you're going to be at the job site by 8 a. m. That's it. I standardized it. We're not doing this crap anymore. Did it cost me more money? Yes, it did. Did it make things better for me in the business? Yes, it did. It actually made it better for everyone because now they can plan their day. Now they know it's a 20-minute drive to the shop. They can set up their routine. They get up at 5.30, do their exercise, whatever. They leave by 6, you know,6.45. They get there. to the shop by 720 and they get in there and blah, blah, blah, blah. They can set up a routine. But when you're doing the, hey, I'll just, I'll give you a text in the morning and let you know what time and where to be. You just gave yourself one more thing you had to do. Now in the morning, you have work to do first thing in the morning. Now you have to go figure out what time and where to be, right? Because you haven't standardized that. You're just reacting. You're just reacting to the day. That's causes tons of more decisions to make. So you standardize all these things. Right. So here's one thing. This is probably one of the best things I can tell you to do. And we talk about this all the time in the Profit Club. Everyone has different like time clocks of when they're when they're good at stuff. When I when I was when I was a carpenter working for, you know, working for someone, I wasn't worth a crap until after lunch. So in the morning, you know, we would start at like seven in the morning. 7.30, and we would take lunch around 11. We'd have a kind of an earlier lunch,10.30,11. And in the morning, I would probably be at like, I don't know,75% efficiency rate. We would go to lunch, and when I came back from lunch... I'm freaking energized. And I'm like, so with the rest of the day, I'm operating at like 110% efficiency, right? We all have different times of the day when we are good at things, when we're energized, depending on if we're a night person or a morning person or whatever. You need to figure out what yours is. You need to figure out when you're at your best and when you're at your best for different decisions. So in the Profit Club, we don't do sales calls. at all unless it's when we're at our best. If we're at our best, you know, from 7 a. m. till 10 a. m., if that's when we're at our best, then we don't do sales calls after 10 a. m. But Brad, you know, customers don't have to work and they have to come in at night. You can, oh well, you can actually, they'll make a decision and they'll change their schedule and they'll make exceptions if they want to work for you. Can you have like one day in the afternoon where you have a two-hour window? Yeah, you can do that. I'm not saying you can't ever do that. But the majority of my calls are going to be in that window when I'm at my best. And I'm not, you bulk them, by the way. There's another tip. You don't do sales calls throughout the day. You bulk them. So you have four sales calls stacked from 7 a. m. till 10 a. m. You stack the four sales calls. One, because you can get into sales mode and then you stay in sales mode for those four calls. So the first call, you might be, you know, slightly rusty. But by the second call, you're better. And by the third call, you're really good. And by the fourth call, you're amazing. You can even stack your sales calls in that order by the order of jobs that you want, like the jobs that you want to have or whatever. Like if I had four jobs that I could bid on, the one that I would want to do the most, like I want to land this job, it would be my fourth call of the day because I want to get better on the first three. What do 99% of you do? Oh, whenever. Just you want me to call you at 430 in the morning? Sure, I'll get up at 430 and give you a call. You know, oh, you want me to come by your house at midnight and talk to you in person? Sure, I'll do that too. You're just, I got to get that sale, Brad. I got to make the customer happy. I got to go out there and do it. No, no, protect your time. Figure out when you're at your best and protect that time. If you have a client that's demanding that you do something out of the norm, Screw them. They're not going to be a good client. 99.99% of the people in the world, regardless of what the news tells you, are good people that are willing to work around you and your schedule and because they want to do business with you, right? They're not going to be this crazy person that we got to cater to. That's a soundtrack that you put in your head that's not true. Now, maybe 99.99 is a little high, but it's definitely in the 90s, okay? Protect your time, protect your pricing, your hiring, your firing, your major purchases, your strategic planning, your long, a long job site day, a conflict in 8 p. m. at night. You know, never make this important decisions after a long job site day, after a conflict with someone, after 8 p. m. at night. Now, I had a rule and I learned this to heart. I learned this on my own without someone telling me. I learned that if I did an estimate after 6 p. m., I made mistakes. So I made it a rule. I set a standard. I will not do estimates after 6 p. m. I would rather work a Saturday morning and knock that estimate out in like 30,45 minutes and then go back, you know, do whatever I want, then work past 6 p. m. because I knew every time I did that, I made a mistake. So being aware of that, I don't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result, right? The definition of insanity. You be aware of this. So you create your decision windows. So example, morning thinking work, right? Or sales time. Afternoon execution time. One day per week. Maybe on Mondays you're still, you know, slow because you partied all weekend. Fridays you're ready to get out of there. So maybe Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday is your most productive day. You know, for me, I don't schedule any meetings on Monday. Like client meetings. I may have like a marketing meeting or something like that, but I don't have client meetings on Monday. Why? Because I use Monday for creative day. Mondays is when I can create content. It's when I can come in and not have instant pressure to start delivering results for my clients. So I can work myself into the week. I don't schedule stuff on Friday, especially, you know, Friday afternoons, but Friday mornings, unless it's, that's kind of a holdover last minute day. But Friday, Fridays is when I actually work mostly on my other business. And so like I can focus time on that. And then Friday afternoon, I pick my son up and we go do our thing. So that's strategic planning. Okay. I don't do certain things on certain days. If you're doing sales, estimating, project management, ordering materials every day of the week, you're wrong. You're 100% wrong. That is not the way to do it. You should do estimates two days a week, Mondays and Fridays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Two days a week, you do all your estimates, you tie and chunk them, and you do it that way. You don't have to visit the job site every day. I promise you. I promise you, you do not have to visit the job site every single day. But Brad, my client said that they wanted me to be here. Well, one, you didn't set the right expectation. And two, if you were good at what you did and you had a good business, they wouldn't need you there because you'd have people that were responsible that would follow the standard and do what they needed to do anyways. See, half the stuff that you do that are so important, that are so urgent is because you just made it up in your head. You think that you have to do that. You just made it up in your head. Most of you do not need to visit the job site every day. Some of you do need to visit the job site every day because you hired complete morons for subs and employees because you were in this decision that you needed somebody and you made a bad hiring decision because you were mentally fatigued and now you got to babysit them all day long. And you're like, man, owning a business sucks. It doesn't suck. You suck. You suck at owning a business. It's not the business's fault. It's your fault. Own it. Fix it. Let's do it. Stop complaining. Reduce personal decision load. This is, I talked about this, the core method. one of the other podcasts. If you have a routine, follow it every morning. I have a routine. Now I'll be straight with you. It's easy to get knocked off. The last several months, I have not followed my routine on a regular basis between like being sick and different things going on. Like it's knocked me off my routine. But if you have a routine, you can reduce decision fatigue. If you know Alex Hermosi, if you've ever heard of that name, he wears the same wife beater shirt. He wears the same. shorts. He wears the same Crocs and he wears the same flannel shirt every day. And he said this before. The reason I do that is because I'm eliminating decision fatigue. I know when I wake up in the morning, I'm wearing this every day. I don't have to make a decision. I'm like, oh, what do I want to wear today? Well, I look really good in black. So let me wear my black shirt today. I got a client meeting later on. So let me wear my blue shirt. That's decision fatigue. You're making a decision. You're adding more decisions to your day. So same breakfast, same workout schedule, same preset calendar blocks, same pre-written sales scripts, same pre-built estimate templates. Simplicity equals the power when you can simplify your business. Another reason why you don't have, you shouldn't do 15 different trades is because you got to have 15 different sales processes. You got to have 15 different estimating processes. You're making your life harder. So build a leadership filter teacher team. Don't bring me problems. And I tell people all this all the time. If you've trained your team to call you every time there's a problem, this is the first thing you should do. They call you, boss, we got a problem. You know, the tile you ordered, there's not enough or whatever. It's the wrong color or layout doesn't fit, whatever the problem is. And normally you would be like, okay, we'll do this, this, this, and this. Or let me jump in my truck and drive right out there and save the day because I'm the hero, right? That's normally what you would do. Do this instead. Hey, Chris, I hear what you're saying. Let me ask you this. What would you do? Oh, I don't know, man. I'm not the boss. It's not my business. You just tell me what you want. Oh, I know. You just work for me. But let's just say you are the boss or let's just say I'm out of town and I'm not available and you had to make this decision. What would you think is the best course? Oh, man, if I had to do it, I would probably do this. Okay, that sounds like a pretty good decision. Why don't you do that? Or if it's not a good decision, you lead them. That's one way. Yeah, that's definitely a way you can do it. Is there any other possible ways? Can you think of any other ways you can do it? Well, let's see. I mean, I guess, well, I guess we could do this. Now that I think about it, this might actually work. And maybe that's the right answer. And you could say, yeah, that actually sounds like a good thing. What do you think? Do you think we should do that one or the other one? And most of the time, they're going to be like, I think we should do this one. The reality of it is most people can figure their own problems. You just have to empower them to solve the problems. What you're doing is taking the power away from them and giving it to yourself. And that's why they call you for every decision. So you just start by saying you figure it out, right? So what you tell them is like, look, if you have a problem and you have to call me, you need to tell me what the problem is and you need to bring me two to three possible solutions. And then you got to tell me what your recommendation is. And then I can approve that, but you have to do that. If you're calling me and wanting me to just solve it for you, I'm not going to do that anymore, right? And then you can train them. And so after a while, you know, after a week or after 12 times or whatever, they're going to call you. They're going to be like, boss, I got a problem. I know I already know what you're going to say. You're going to say, you know, what's three ideas or what's three ways, you know, you can solve it, figure it out yourself or pretend you're not here. I know you're going to say that. But, you know, this is probably what I would do. And this, I just want to make sure it's good. And you can reaffirm them. Yeah, that sounds like a great man. That sounds like a great solution. And after they, you know, after they start making the right decision. four, five, six,10 times in a row, they've graduated. And now you can bless them to go make that decision without you. You know what? Hey, John, you've been, you know, we've been working on this and you've actually done a great job. Nine out of the last 10 times you made the right decision. And I'm good with that percentage. 90% of the time you make a good decision. I'm good with that. The other 10%, we can work through it. So you don't need me anymore. So just figure it out. I'm giving you the power. I'm giving you the responsibility. Anything that's, you know, above a certain threshold or above a certain cost or above a certain level of decision making, you can bring that to me. But from here to here, you're now responsible and you don't need to call me. And so you can teach them how to make those decisions so that you don't have to. And you're just freed up, you know,12 phone calls a day by doing that. What's the identity shift here? Like I was saying all this time, most contractors pride themselves on being the guy who handles everything. I can remember distinctly wanting to be the guy that anyone can go to for a problem and I could solve it. I wanted to be the guy that had the solution to everything. I love fixing things. I love solving problems. That's why I'm a business coach. I love solving problems in this nature way more than solving problems in the construction world, you know, owning the construction business. I love solving problems. It's my favorite thing to do. That is also a double-edged sword because it means that I want to be in charge of everything and I want to make all the decisions. The guy who wants to handle everything, the problem solver, the hero, right? Whether you think that I'm right or wrong, it doesn't matter. This is facts. Like we all feel good when we make the right decision and we solve things. The problem is the hero's burnout, right? You can't be a hero all the time,24-7. You know, you have to start thinking like a CEO. You got to start thinking like an operator, like a leader. CEOs reduce decisions. They have board of directors. They have vice presidents. CEOs are just the visionaries and they control the very top level things that no one else can solve. Everyone else below them solves it on their own. Operators create structure. So if you're like an operations expert, you're going to create a structure that everyone can follow. If you're a leader, you build systems. that your team can follow. The military is nothing more than systems. When you go to boot camp, it is a system that's been developed over hundreds of years to produce the greatest output of a person in that timeframe. So you're literally going through a system over and over. It's just a factory system of producing soldiers, producing Marines, producing sailors. That's a leader. A leader builds the systems that can be followed. Okay. If you want freedom in your business, you must design a business that makes fewer decisions per day. You have to relieve yourself of the decision-making process. And the hardest thing you will ever do in your business, hands down, the hardest thing is give up control. It's trusting other people. If you have trust issues, that's why your life's chaotic, right? Part of that that ties into it is when your name's on the vehicle. because it's Smith Construction, every bad decision they make is a reflection on you personally because it's your name. Although in reality, your business doesn't represent you. You've created that soundtrack that you believe to be true, but your business does not represent you. When was the last time Amazon got screwed up in order and you blamed Jeff Bezos because of that? You never do. You never blame the owner. When was the last time you went to a restaurant and the server, you got crappy service? Did you say, I want to talk to the owner? Or no, you say, let me talk to a manager, right? You want to talk to someone in charge. You don't leave there going, man, the person who owns this restaurant sucks as a human being. That doesn't happen. That just lives rent-free in your head. It's a soundtrack in your head that you think that other people, if they make a mistake, it's going to reflect badly on you. I'm telling you right now, I did this. My biggest fear. It's still to this day, my biggest fear in a business is to wake up one day and see one of my employees got arrested for something and they're wearing a logo company shirt. Like that is my biggest fear. Has it ever happened? No. Is it ever going to happen? Probably not. Does it still, you know, cause fear and panic? Yes. But I can push through that. Like I can still have like an emotional thought about it, but I can push through it. I don't let it make a decision. So let me close with this. I'm going to challenge you on this. How many decisions did you make today or yesterday? Think about, you know, I mean, you're not going to keep track, but just think of, go through your day and like the big decisions you had to make. I mean, spend time doing this. Spend 10,15 minutes doing this. Just think about your day today or think about your yesterday and just think about all the decisions that you made, the ones that you can even remember. And there's probably double that, that you don't even remember. But just think about all the decisions, like go through and count them. Well, I had to order this material. I had to talk to this client and get this solution. I had to talk to the guys. I had to fix this problem, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Go through all the ones that you can remember. And there's probably about 30 to 40 decisions that you had to make. And again, that's not all of them. That's just the ones you remember. It's easy to see that you're making too many decisions every day. How many of those decisions that you made, those 20,30,40 decisions, how many of those decisions were completely unnecessary? Meaning you didn't need to be the one to make that decision. Now, some of them are, some of them you did, you did need to make that decision, but how many of them were completely unnecessary? You didn't need to make that decision. And this one might sting a little bit, but think about how many decisions you made that cost you money. You underbid that one job. You told the customer that you would go ahead and add this extra work on because you, you didn't want to disappoint them, right? How many decisions did you make cost you money? If you feel overwhelmed. In your business, it's not because you can't handle pressure. It's not because you're not built to handle pressure. It's because your business is forcing you to think too much. You've created a problem machine. You've created a problem business where you're the only one that can solve it. And that's why you're overwhelmed and that's why you make poor decisions. That's the end of it, guys. I hope this was helpful. I really do. I know that I've struggled with this a lot, decision fatigue, and it sucks when you don't get enough sleep. It sucks when you have a baby that's sick and up all night and you got to go in on two hours of sleep and then you got to make a big decision, a hiring decision or whatever. One thing that I've also learned, because I have bad days too. I mean, I have days where I don't want to do this or I just want to quit. When I'm starting to feel down, like when I start to feel sorry for myself and I'm like, you know what? I don't know if I want to do this anymore. Maybe I should do something else. I have a rule to myself that is I have to wait until the next day to make that decision. to make that important decision. Because I know that I'm actually just in a psychological low and I'm probably going to make the wrong decision. But if I sleep on it and wake up the next day, I don't feel anywhere near the same about that decision that I did the day before. It's not even on my mind. Like I'm not even thinking about it. I'm like, that was stupid. Why was I thinking that? I don't want to do that. So I just made it a rule that anytime I start to feel like crap, I just don't make big decisions at all. I just wait one day. Even if it's a really big decision that needs to be made, I'll just be like, I'm sorry, I can't decide today. I'll let you know in the morning or I'll let you know tomorrow. That has saved me from making a lot of bad decisions because I knew that I was having, and that's not even necessarily a decision of fatigue. It's just like if you're depressed or in a bad mood or had a bad day or bad week or whatever, bad sleep, if you're not in your prime, don't make important decisions. So that's just a rule I made and it served me well. It served me very well. Guys, that's all I got for this episode. I hope it was helpful. I hope you can understand that decision fatigue is real and it's probably plaguing you every single day. If you go through that exercise and just count how many decisions you made, how many of them were unnecessary and how much money did it cost you? It'd be a good eye opener. I'd encourage you to do that. So that's all I got a little bit long. Actually, I thought this was going to be like a 20 minute podcast and we're almost at an hour. I appreciate you hanging out with me. If you did, you know where to find me on the socials. Go to the show notes to get the links or you can just find me by searching the Hammer and Grind podcast. Appreciate you hanging out with me. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
