Every decision you make in your business is either building the future that you want or the one you're trying to escape. Hey, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Brad, and I am a licensed general contractor. I am the author of the Contractor Profit Blueprint, and I helped overwhelmed contractors boost their profits and regain their freedom in four proven steps. And we're going to get right into the show and talk about the decisions that we make and how it affects our future. So your future isn't determined by one big break. This happens all the time. People are like, oh, man, I'm going to sell this huge job. And most of the time we're already spending the money from the profits of that job that we haven't even sold yet. We think the one big job is going to change everything for our business. That one big job is going to erase all the hundred bad decisions that we've made in the past. And that's not the case. Your future is built one decision at a time. And every contractor is making dozens of decisions every day. And oftentimes we don't think about the ramifications of those decisions in our future. We think about it in our current time today. Like, I need to make a decision to make my life easier today, but we don't think about how it affects the future tomorrow. So the question isn't, what was that the right decision that I just made? The question is, what future did that decision build for me? I know it made my life easier today, but what decision did I make? How did that affect the future that I want? Right. So every decision either builds the future that you want or it builds the future that you're trying to escape because we're making the wrong decisions. So we're going to be talking about decision making. Okay. We're going to be talking about stop optimizing for today. We're going to talk about the three decision filter, and we're going to talk about the how to think for the future. You. Okay, so let's get into this and rock and roll. So number one, stop optimizing for today. So making decisions for immediate comfort. Whenever we make decision decisions, we usually make it for immediate comfort. We're like, oh, I got this big decision. How do I solve my life today? How do I make it easy for me today? Right. We don't think about how that affects the future. So here's some examples. Lowering your price because it's easier. I really want this job, Brad. I don't have anything on the schedule for next week. I need this job for. So let me lower my price on this job so I can get it. What you're not thinking about is that now you just filled your schedule for two weeks and now at a lower price point where you're going to make less profit, you can't fill the schedule with another job that's going to actually make more money. That's short term thinking, I need this job, Let me sell it for a discount. Doing it yourself because it's just quote, faster, step aside and let me do it. I can do it faster. I know everyone does that. If you're on the tools, you've done that hundreds of times because you think you don't have time to teach someone how to do something properly. And so you do it today and guess what, you get to do it tomorrow and you get to do it the next day, and so on and so on and so on because you never properly taught your team how to do stuff. By the way, if you charge appropriately, guess what happens? You have lots of extra time that you can spend on things when you don't charge appropriately. You run around like a chicken with your head cut off and you're never have enough time and you're always behind schedule and we gotta go, go, go, go, go. That's what happens. You make the decision today to lower your price because it solves today's problem. Nothing on the schedule. And then the next two weeks you run around like, you know, with the chicken, your head cut off, stressed out all the time telling your guys, we got to hurry up, we don't have enough time. There's not enough in the, in the budget to do this and this and this. And you just screw the next two weeks. That's the perfect example of how solving today's problem affects our future. Other examples, avoiding difficult conversations. Men, this happens all the time. I, I just got off a call a while ago where I have two, there's two business partners and one of them was, he was kind of sharing like, hey, we have an issue here. And I, you know, I need to talk with the other, you know, the other owners, like we're not communicating. And so I said, well, let's just ask him, hey, why don't you do this? I mean, we're on the call, all three of us are on the call together. And I just, you know, point blank asked him, why don't you do this? That's what a difficult conversation is. I don't need to have a conversation through proxies. You know, I don't need to Leave hints, by the way. That's what people do with their spouse. And then they're like, man, she didn't pick up on the hint. You know, I was hinting I wanted this hunting rifle for my birthday and she didn't pick up on it. Yeah, that's because it's stupid. That's a stupid way to communicate. Communicate directly and have those difficult conversations with your team. If something comes up, have it and have it immediately. Now, there are times where you may need to wait 24 hours. If you're fired up and your emotions are all over the place, then, yeah, you may need to wait 24 hours to calm down so that you don't, you know, make a bad decision. That's a little bit different than when, you know, you know, John over here has been underperforming for three months and you haven't said anything. That's the stuff we're talking about. That's you avoiding the difficult conversations. That's you making it easy for you, hoping that the problem writes itself so that you don't have to have that conversation. But it's affecting your future. It's affecting everyone else around you. It's affecting your team. Because you don't want to have that conversation. You're avoiding it. Saying yes to every customer. You should be saying no five times as much as you say yes to jobs. Like, you should be turning down work, not saying yes to everyone that calls you. That's a scarcity mindset. Those of you that want to, that think you have to close and sell every single job, that's actually a, like a problem. Like you have some, some childhood trauma you probably need to deal with. It's not realistic to sell every single job. That's silly. It's not. It's not realistic. So saying yes to every customer, putting off marketing because you're busy. Well, Brad, I just didn't have time. You know, we're just super busy. I had to work 12 hours today on the, on the job, so I couldn't record that, you know, one minute video. I just didn't have time. You're putting off decisions that are going to affect tomorrow when you don't have any leads coming in. That one video that you did could have popped off, went viral and, and been the, the catalyst for making, you know, an extra half a million dollars if you just don't know. But hey, I'm. I'm too busy. So. The decisions that make today easier often make tomorrow harder. Decisions we make today that make today easier often make tomorrow harder. So every decision builds a different future. Every decision we make builds a different future. Everyone, everyone likes to talk about, you know, alternate universes and parallel universes and all this crap, which I don't believe in any of that, by the way. But, you know, there's this parallel universe where depending on where you're at, different outcomes, you can, you, you do change your future depending on the decisions that you're making. So here's some examples. If I raise my prices, if I create a system, if I train an employee, if I spend an hour learning sales, if I shoot one project video, if I review my PNL every Friday, what does that future look like a year from now? If you do those things and you do them consistently, what will your future look like a year from now? Now the opposite of those are, if I keep discounting, if I never train people, if I never market my business, if I keep doing everything myself, if I ignore my numbers, what future am I building? I get on calls every day, all the time with people. I'm just not making enough money. Brad. Awesome. How much money did you, how much money have you sold the year to date? I'm not really sure. Well, what's your, what's your average gross profit? I'm not really sure. Okay, well, what's your net profit? I'm not really sure. Well, how much do you pay yourself? I don't really pay myself. I just pay bills. Well, how. What's your closing ratio? I don't really know. Like every single day. These conversations, by the way, those are all things that we talk about in the book. So, like, you know, this will help solve some of those. But you have to know your numbers, guys. And simply saying I'm not very good with numbers is not an excuse. It's not. You're making today easier because you don't want to be uncomfortable learning numbers. I've worked with people at all. I mean, I've worked with guys that are doing five, six million dollars a year and their books haven't been right for two years. They don't. They literally have no idea how much money they're making. Five, six million dollar business. They have no idea how much money they're making. They have no idea how much expenses there are. There could be tens of thousands of dollars leaving their business through, you know, embezzling or whatever, theft. And they have no idea because they never look at the numbers. They never have it figured out. You can't do that. Your decisions today are affecting your future. You're not making one decision this Is this is really important when you make these decisions? Like, I don't have time to make that video. You're not making it a simple decision. You're actually choosing a future for you. You're choosing a path for your future. A different future, an alternate reality, an alternate future. That's what you're doing. Every decision we make changes our future for us. And most of the time, comfort wins. So here's the three decision filters, okay? This is like a framework for you. So filter number one, does this move me closer to the business and life that I actually want? Does this decision move me closer to the life and future that I want? Okay, does this. Does this align with my vision that I have? Is this helping me become the owner I want to be? Or am I just putting out another fire? So is this decision moving me closer to the business and future that I want? That's number one. Number two, filter. Can this be done better, faster, or simpler? Now, I used to have a different version of this which was, can I do this better, faster, cheaper. Now, not cheaper in the sense of making the end product or experience, like, worse, like not using cheaper materials. I'm saying, is there a way, like, maybe be more efficient? Or we can. There's a new material we're not aware of that is cheaper than what we're currently using, but it's better. Like, I don't mean cheap out. It's the same, I would say, all the time, every day. And I shortened it to just better, faster, cheaper. So if I'm doing something and it feels like it's not like I'm just not doing it the best, like this, this way I'm doing it just feels cumbersome. It doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel like it's, you know, the way we can do it. And I would say to myself, better, faster, cheaper. Can we do this better, faster, cheaper? And it would force me to look at other opportunities. 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 estimate 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. Well, how could we do it better? Well, we could do this. Well, how could we do it faster? We could do this and how could we do it cheaper? We could do this all the time, every day, all day, just asking myself, is this better, faster, cheaper? Now we've changed it to simpler because cheaper can. It does imply like doing things cheaply. So can this be done better, faster, or simpler? So your old production mindset applied to an entire business. So you ask, you know, better, faster, simpler applies it to sales, marketing, hiring, production systems, meetings, communication, so on and so on. How can we apply that framework? How can we do this better? How can we do it faster? How can we do it simpler? Anytime you have any kind of setback or any kind of frustration point or anything that feels like it's clunky in your business and you don't have a really good way of doing it, you ask that question, how can we do this better, faster, simpler? Okay, so that's like a decision framework of like, if I change my sales process, can I do sales better, faster or simpler? Yes, you can stop doing free estimates. That's better. It's also faster because you don't have to do as many estimates and the sales process is simpler. So you could actually apply all three of those just to the sales process. Yeah. Continuous improvement never stops. I'm a big fan of Kanai. Constant and never ending improvement. That's from Tony Robbins. So like this is this applies too to your business of, you know, making decisions, but making the decisions under the filter of can I do this better, faster, simpler. So filter number three is, does this decision buy freedom or does it steal from my future? This is a powerful one. Does this decision buy me freedom today or does it steal from my future? Does it steal from tomorrow? So here's examples that buy freedom, raising prices, creating SOPs, hiring leaders, marketing consistently learning sales, reviewing finances. Those are decisions that we do that bias freedom. Here's examples that steal freedom. Underpricing, avoiding conflict, keeping toxic employees, saying yes to everything, running the business from your checking account. Right. Every day that you tell that, you tell me I know. I know I need to get my. I know I need to get my finances together. I know I need to. Every single day, the contractors say, I know I need to do this. But that's the decision where they're making today easier and stealing from tomorrow. You're prolonging the pain. You can go through the pain quickly, or you can just prolong it for a long period of time. So think like the future you. Think like the future you. Now, there's another way of thinking about this. Not just the future you, but think like you're running the business that you want today. So I had this conversation this week, yesterday, with one of my. One of my clients. And, you know, the finances are a little tight because the bloated overhead and loans and stuff. And so, you know, we're talking about making decisions and stuff. And I said, I want you to pretend like you're running a $2 million business right now. He's under 1 million. But I said, pretend like you're running a 2 million or $5 million business right now. Reverse engineer that. What does that look like? Is that it? Does that $5 million business involve you doing all the sales and solving all the problems and doing everything in your business? And the answer is no, because it's not scalable. Right. So if you're. If you're smaller now and you're trying to get to a certain level already, start running your business like you're at that level. Use that mindset like you're already running that business. Even if you don't understand or fully think about, like, how you can do it, because you don't know think about. Well, you know, it. It takes me. I work 60 hours a week, and I only get, you know, we only do 800,000 in revenue, and I only pay myself 75,000. Well, there's no way I can get to 5 million because I don't have any more hours available. Yeah. So you have to change the way you do things. It forces you to think of other ways of doing them. There's a great book called 10x is better than 2x. You know, part of this comes from that book where you're like, it's much easier to think how to do something 10x than it is to think of how to do stuff 2x. You know, I'm at 800,000 right now. I want to be at 1.5. That's a 2x. Right. Whereas 10x might be. I want to be at 10 million. And that's a whole different ball game. Of like how you think about running your business. So you think like the future you. And so instead of asking what would I do? You ask, what would the owner I'm trying to become do? What would the owner of a five million dollar business do? How would he solve this problem? How would he respond to this? So this is where you, you know, you start to shift your identity. I never really thought about, you know, I always wanted a 5 million dollar business but I didn't like it was possible. Well, it's in your mind. You can own a five million dollar business and you could start making decisions like a five million dollar business owner because it forces you through that filter to make those decisions. Right? You can't go out and sell every job at $5 million. It's not possible. You may have to hire some salespeople. Well, before you can hire salespeople, what do you have to have in place? You got to have a good sales process, right? You got to get enough leads coming in. You can't hire salespeople if you got no leads. So like now we got to fix the sales. The, I mean the lead process, the lead problem, rather. Right. Well, how do we get more leads? Well, we got to do this like you can, you can reverse engineer it. If you want to have a $5 million business, reverse engineer what it's going to take to get to that level and start making decisions as if you own that already. So successful people don't wait until they're successful in order to think differently. You guys have to, this is, this is really important. Listen to me. The thinking and decisions that got you to here, where you are in your business are not the same thinking and decisions that's going to get you there. You will change the way you make decisions. You will change the way you think as you grow into that next level. What got you here will not get you there. The people in your life who got you here will not necessarily get you there. Some of you have a lead guy who has helped you go from zero to, you know, 1 million and he's got you there. But he's not going to be the guy that gets you from 1 million to 5 million. You may actually have to let him go for whatever reason. There's lots of reasons why that may be true. But this idea like everyone's going to be with you as you go all the way up and you have to hold on to them because the loyalty and stuff, yes, loyalty is very important, but not to the point of sacrificing your business for Growth, if that's your goal, right? So like, you have to. It's a different way of thinking. Your mindset will change. You can't grow to that level doing things the same way. Because if you're. Especially if you're stuck, if you've been stuck at a revenue for two or three or four years now, that's because you hit your ceiling. You've hit your ceiling mentally, emotionally, right? Logically, you've hit that ceiling because you were able to get to that level. But you don't have the right information, you don't have the right team or the right people to get you to the next level. It's the whole reason that coaching exists is to help people get past their stuck ways of thinking. So you have to change your identity. You have to start thinking like that person. You don't wait till you get there to change it. You change it now. And because of that change, it will help you get there. So here's what I want you to do for the next week. Before every important decision, I want you to just pause and I want you to ask yourself three questions. Does this move me toward the business and life that I want? Does this decision move me towards the business in life that I want? Can this be done better, faster, or simpler? I'll tell you a quick little story. Sidebar. I was having another conversation this week with another contractor who, who has done really well and he's got a bottleneck right now. And he's like, I'm like, you need to do more sales training. You need more role plays. Do more role plays. He's like, man, I. I want to, but I'm just like maxed out with time. And I'm like, well, break down what you're at, what your day looks like. Break it down. And we. He starts telling me I go to get up and go to the gym, which good. You know, I start about 7 o'. Clock. Okay. And then I go by the job sites. I'm like, okay, well how long does that take? Well, that, you know, that usually goes until 12. I'm like, well, there's half your problem right there. Dude, you have two job sites. Only two. Doesn't take you five hours to go to two different job sites. Secondarily, you don't have to go to the job site every single day. Well, I want to make sure I'm doing good for the customer. And I'm checking this and I'm checking that. That's the thinking of today. I have to be in complete control of everything. Every single day to make sure it's done right instead of thinking, what would it look like if I had someone who was in charge of quality assurance? What would it look like if I had a project manager who, who could be more dedicated to this instead of me? So the decision making is me, me, me. Make it easier for me today. Instead of what do I want that future to look like? That's a perfect example of, like, can it be done better, faster, simpler? And sometimes the answer to that question means removing you from the equation. Well, Brad, I, I, I. It's my baby, it's my business. I have to be in charge of everything. No, you don't. No, you don't. You're the reason why you're stuck because you think you have to do everything. You don't. And number three decision is, does this decision buy me freedom or does it steal from my future? Does having that difficult conversation with that employee who's underperforming, does putting that off, does that buy me freedom or is that stealing from the future? It's stealing from your future. You need to have that conversation right now. Right, so this is like again, the three filter question for the next week. Filter all your big decisions through this. These questions, does it move me forward or towards my business and life that I want? Can this be done better, faster, simpler? Does this decision buy me freedom or does it steal from my future? So here's a, here's a little closing quote for you. Your business is nothing more than the accumulation of your decisions. Change your decisions and eventually you'll change your future. All right, remember, every decision builds a different future. The only question is, are you building the one you actually want? That's the, that's the last question. So this is a pretty short one. It's direct, but it's also very powerful. Are we trying to make today easier so that we can pay for it tomorrow? And there's interest on that, by the way. I didn't talk about that. But whenever you put things on credit, you have interest, you have to pay. So stuff that you're trying to do today, that makes your life easier, you have to pay interest on that, meaning it's going to be harder for you later on. So just do it now, get it over with, grit your teeth, get through it, and do the right decision. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. I hope this was helpful and powerful. And if you have any ideas, always, you know, send me a message. Go to the, the website, the hammer grind, podcast.com. leave me a voicemail. What's a topic you want me to talk about. If you want me to change something, if you don't like the way I do things, whatever. I don't care. Just want to hear from you. And I appreciate you all for hanging out. Remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
