A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Welcome to Hammer and Grind, the podcast built for contractors. Real contractors, true stories, real solutions. My name is Brad Hebner, and I will guide you on your journey to mastery of your construction business. You can find Hammer and Grind on all the social media platforms. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Now, if you're looking for more help, you can check out our free Facebook group called The Contractor Profit Group. I do free trainings in there and it's a great community to be a part of. Now, if you're serious about making more money, saving more time, and creating a business that supports your lifestyle, check out my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. I've put together a proven system for creating a winning business. Now listen, I'm so confident that you will succeed in my program. I'm now offering a 10x ROI guarantee. That means if you don't make at least a 10x return on your investment within a 12-month period, I will refund you the full amount. You can find out more information about The Profit Club at hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. So guys, before we get started on this podcast, I just want to tell you that I'm very thankful for all of you that listen to this podcast on a regular basis. If you've just started listening to it, I'm thankful and grateful that you guys are here. And honestly, I just don't express enough. This is episode 79. I can't believe that I've done 79 of these and it's been well over a year and a half and have no plan on stopping in the future. Just want to take a moment before we get started and say thank you so much for participating, listening, sharing, commenting, all the things that you guys are doing. It really gives me motivation to keep doing this. I hear from a lot of contractors on a regular basis that tell me they listen to the podcast. It's helped them in their business. It's changed things for them. They're no longer doing free estimates. They're doing all these different things. They're charging 50% gross profit. And it's changing their business and their lives. And so I'm very grateful for this platform that I have to be able to share this information with you. So just want to take a moment to express that to you. And let's get started. So on today's podcast, we're talking about communication. Now, I titled it effective communication. Originally, I had it titled as leadership communication. Really, it's about communication all together, all across the board. This is also known in corporate America as executive communication. So whether it's executive communication, leadership communication, effective communication, we're talking about communication. So I wanted to start by, I did a little bit of research on executive communication before recording this podcast. And so I want to share with you what I found on a website. And this is according to the website, Executive Leadership Consulting. That's the business that does this. CEO, high-level, top-level management type consulting. This is what they say. And I'm just going to read this verbatim and then we'll jump into this about contracting and how it relates. So according to them, there are five qualities that you need to have in your communication to get your message across. Now, this doesn't matter if you're talking to clients. It doesn't matter if you're talking to your team. It doesn't matter if you're talking to vendors. It's just anytime you're talking to someone, you need to be better at communicating with them. So there are five qualities. Number one is simple. One of the biggest detriments to communication is attempting to demonstrate your intelligence and vocabulary. For leaders, it's critical that you communicate simply. And this ties into other podcasts that I've done on ego and puking all over your customers. We want to talk about things like, oh, I've been doing this for 25 years and you don't want to put that shower over there because of this, this, and this. And we only use high quality products and our shingles come with built-in fungicide and blah, blah, blah. All these things that make us sound important. And this is what they're talking about. I've also heard this that when you communicate with people, you really need to communicate at an eight-year-old level. Like you're talking to an eight-year-old, not talking down to them, but explaining things at an eight-year-old's comprehension level. And there's even software that you can do if you're doing emails or written texts, or even if you're going to say something, you could type it out and drop it in there. And it will tell you what grade level this thing is written at, where the parts of your text and communication are. Too complicated, run-on sentences, stuff like that. One of them is called the Hemingway Editor. If you want to check that out, the Hemingway Editor is a really good one to use to check what you're saying. So that's keeping it simple. Number two, clear. You must have a message that is understandable to your audience. Remember, memorable is doable. When it's clear and simple, people remember it. They repeat it to others, and they will be more likely to take action and do it. this ties into also marketing. A lot of you have, when you start your business and you use certain business names, which I've beat up before, I'm not going to get into it. But if you have a business that's like Tri-State Gutters and Roofing, that's a long business. It's hard to remember that. If I sell a truck driving the road with Tri-State Gutters and Roofing, and I go home later on, I try to remember it. I can't remember. And it was tri-state. I think it was tri-state roofing or maybe it was tri-state gutter. I can't remember now. I just remember it was gutters and roofing. So keeping things simple, even in your marketing messages, this applies. But when you're talking to people, keep it simple. I'm laughing because this reminds me of myself. And I'll go ahead and go on this little tangent here. One of the things that I do when I'm talking to my team is I like to do a 30,000 foot view. basically of the project and then come back and narrow it down. So what I'm guilty of doing, we go to do a project. Let's say we're doing a bathroom model and it's day one. I'm just going over the stuff with the guys. I'm like, okay guys, here's what we're doing. We're going to demo everything. We're going to move this plumbing over here for the shower. We're going to put tile on the floors. We're going to be doing this, this, and this. And I'm going through like 15 different major. components of this bathroom that we're doing just to give them an overview. With a problem with a lot of people, especially today that have like ADD, short attention spans, very perfectionist and very precise, what they do is they hear the very first thing that I say and then their mind starts planning out how they're going to do the first thing. And then they don't hear anything else that I say. I can't tell you how many times this has bit me in the butt. where I've said things and then I come back and like, hey, why didn't you do this? I didn't hear you even say that. I didn't know you said that. Right? So keeping it clear makes it easy for your team to understand. It's not 100% translation to keeping it clear as far as doing a 30,000 foot view. But if you don't understand your people and how they learn, it's going to make it more difficult for them to grasp that. So keep your information clear. Concise is the third one. Don't waste time beating around the bush. Get to your point before you lose your audience. If you're talking to your team and you start talking about, all right, guys, so first thing we're going to do is we're going to go out and we're going to fill up the trucks. And then we're going to load up the tools. And then we're going to go to the store and pick up the materials. And then we're going to go to the job site and unload everything. And all that information to you may seem like you're making it clear. but it's not concise. You could summarize all that to say, okay, this is what we're going to load up and go, do our typical morning start. And then when we get to the job, we're going to start, you know, do whatever. You can already have like a start plan that's been beat into their head. This is our normal start plan every morning. Say you're a lawn care company. Every morning we go and we fill up our gas tanks. We do this, this, this, and this. This is the same things that we do every single morning. So I don't necessarily need to repeat that information. I can say, look, we're going to do our normal startup and then we're going to do this. But be concise and don't beat around the bush. That even applies to when you're giving bad information. When you're telling somebody bad information, don't beat around the bush. Chris Foss says, if you have to give someone bad information, when they call and say, hey, Hey, man, I got good news and bad news. You pause for one second and then you say, here's the bad news. I need you to work late tonight or I need you to work Saturday. Don't wait for like 10 seconds and wait for them to like, oh, bad news, what happened? Am I getting fired or what's going on? Did something happen to my wife? I don't know what's happening. So be concise when you communicate with people, especially when you're talking about bad news. Number four is connected. Think about what inspires and motivates you. Give examples and tell stories to connect with them and make your message more memorable. So storytelling is a very powerful way to get points across. It's something that I've been working on for a long time to do better at through storytelling. People relate to storytelling. If you haven't read the book, Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, highly recommend reading that. It is a great book on how to promote your brand. through storytelling. This also applies to your team. Hey guys, I know that when we get home, when we get back at the end of the day, everybody wants to go home. We want to throw our trucks and park our trucks, get out and leave. But I used to do the same thing. I used to have that same mentality. But what happened was one day I came home and I forgot to do that. I came back to the shop and I forgot to do this, forgot to unload the truck. And there was a battery in there and it was 100 degrees and it caught fire and burnt my truck down. I lost my truck. So whenever we get back, we need to make sure we take our batteries out, put them in the shop, blah, blah, blah. Now I made that story up. But if that was a real story, it's now connecting like, hey, oh crap, if I don't take the batteries out and they catch fire, I don't want to be the guy that burns down the company truck or worse. So now there's a connection there. as to why it's so important to tell a story and connect there. The last thing they talk about is frequency. Most important, communicate frequently. People don't usually get it the first time or the first way. Ding, ding, ding. Hear this again. People don't usually get it the first time or the first way. Research shows that spaced repetition... is key to learning and retaining information. This is why companies put their mission statement and their mottos and stuff on walls in their buildings and stores because they want people to see that over and over and over again to understand why they do what they do. It's important for you to tell your team why you do what you do. What are your core values? What's the reason you get up in the morning and do this? Your team need to know that on a regular basis. the frequency of how often you give information is super critical. Now, this is where I have a fault in this. And I know a lot of you probably have the same fault. And that is that you can probably learn things the first time you see them. I can watch a YouTube video on how to do something that I've never done before, then go out and execute that activity. with near perfection or near the same quality that was done in the video. I have that ability to learn quickly and replicate. So in my mind, I believe everyone else has that same level of ability. The reality of it is they don't. And this is where common sense gets most of you in trouble. And we're going to dive into that here in just a minute. So be frequent with the information that you give and understand that they don't usually get it the first time or the first way that it's done. Some people learn through visual. Some people learn through reading. Some people learn through hearing. Some people learn through a combination of all three. I'm a very visual learner, as are most people in the trades. However, that does not mean that exclusively everyone learns through visual training. I've had people in the coaching. in my coaching business, in the Profit Club, that most of our training is done through video because it's easy to record videos on how to do things. But I had one person that was like, hey, I'm very much... I read. That's how I learn is through readings. Can you take those videos and transcribe them and put them in written form so I can read them like a blog? Now, I have like, I don't know,40,50 videos in the training. And to me, that's like a lot of work to do that. And he was the only person who's ever actually asked for that. And so I haven't done that yet. Someday I probably will. But it's an example of that not everyone learns the way that you teach or the way that you learn. So you have to be open-minded and understand that your team learned differently. This is also why it's so important to truly understand your team, to get to know them and understand them. Some core elements of effective communication. And again, this can be substituted with leadership communication or executive communication. Number one, always start with gratitude. Now, if you remember at the beginning of this podcast, I started with gratitude. That was partly to tee this up, but also partly because it's something that I want to do and need to do. And I'm actually very grateful for this opportunity. So what I said was not, I mean, I was being honest and sincere, but it also was to tee up this example of being grateful. So show gratitude when you first get on the call. If you're talking to a prospect and you get on the call with him, hey, Mary, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. John, thanks for reaching out and asking us to give you a quote on your project. You know, Shelly, I'm so thankful that you thought of us to help you with your project. Show some type of gratitude. It actually elevates you as a human being when you do that. This applies to anything in life. When you go to the grocery store and you're checking out and the cashier is working, and a lot of times it might be a young girl who's in college trying to make some extra money. You can say, hey, I just want to tell you, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate your service to check out and get our food or whatever it is. Just show some gratitude. They'll usually light up. They'll usually smile. It actually helps people. especially whenever there's lots of uncertainty going on in the world. Be grateful. Start with gratitude anytime you communicate with someone. If you're communicating with your team, hey guys, good morning. Another beautiful day out here. I just want to tell you all, I appreciate you and all that you do for this business. I couldn't do it without you. Now, let's get started. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't have to be every single day. It doesn't have to be every single time you talk to someone. If I'm sending the text to my lead guy to say, hey, go pick up the... I need you to run by the shop and grab a trailer. I don't need to start off by saying, hey, Chris, I just want to say I appreciate you. Now, can you go by the shop and grab a trailer? It's not so much like one-on-one everyday communication. But when you're talking to customers, when you're talking to your team as a whole... when you're talking to someone that does some type of service out in the world, it's always a good idea to start with gratitude. I don't know any downside to not sharing gratitude to someone when you meet them. So that's the first thing. Start with gratitude. Number two, remove roadblocks. This is so critical, guys. A lot of contractors don't understand this concept. A lot of contractors think, that if someone's reaching out to you and they want to hire you, that they should feel blessed. They should have gratitude that you answered the phone and that you're calling them back and all these things. A lot of that is ego. A lot of it's pride. But even if you don't have ego and pride, what does remove roadblocks mean? One of the things that I teach in the Profit Club is you should get pictures first before you jump on the call. I always try to push people to my website. and go to my form because on my form, it asks all of the pertinent questions that I need. It has an opportunity to upload pictures. It gives examples of how to upload pictures, which that obviously ties into having clear and concise. I'm removing roadblocks. If you go to my website and you look at my form for my construction company, it says, please upload pictures of your project. And then I give instructions on how to take pictures. Why would I do that? Because what are some roadblocks? Let's say they want a tile backsplash. They want to get an estimate on tiling the backsplash in their kitchen. And they come in and they send a picture. They send me a picture. Don't come in. They send me a picture and it's like two feet away. And there's like six pictures that are two feet away from the wall, like in consecutive to like to show off the whole wall. Well, that doesn't give me any idea to the size or scale or scope of what I'm doing because the pictures are too zoomed in. So the roadblock in this situation is not getting good pictures. So what happens if they send me pictures that aren't any good? I have to reach back out to them. Hey, Terry, thanks for sending these in. Unfortunately, your pictures look like shit and I can't understand anything about what you want done. So can you go back and retake all these pictures for me? That's a roadblock. You're creating roadblocks for your people, for your customers, for your team. If you don't have clear and concise communication, right? So on my form, it simply says, here's how to take the best pictures. If you're doing a big project, you don't need to take close-ups. You can take them from across the room, just trying to get an idea of the entire scope. If it's something that is very detailed and small, then you can take close-ups of it. For example, if there's a particular type of trim that you need to have, replaced, you could take a close-up of that trim profile, but then also take a picture from 10 feet away so I can see the whole opening or whatever it is. So I'm giving them instructions on how to take effective pictures so that I don't have to go back and redo things. That's removing roadblocks for your customers. If someone calls you and says, hey, I want to get an estimate. on a new landscaping project and you say, great, I'd love to do that. Here's our process. I just need you to send us some pictures and a general scope of what you want to do. We'll reschedule another call later on and then dive into it. That's not a bad thing to do, but the roadblocks are now, well, how do I send the pictures? Should I email them to you? Should I text them to you? Should I record a video? What should I do? If you don't give clear and concise... communication on how to do business with you, you're creating roadblocks for your people. And if they see that as a roadblock of, well, I don't know how to take pictures. I don't know how to upload. I'm not very tech savvy. I don't know how to do this. It creates a roadblock. And now they have to decide if they want to go through this roadblock to do business with you. So make it easy for them. Say, hey, all you got to do is email the pictures to us. here's what I'll do. What's your email address? They give it to you and you simply say, I'm going to send you an email right now. All you have to do is respond to that email and add the pictures. You've removed that roadblock now of how they can communicate with you. Maybe you have an app of some kind that they can upload pictures to. Hey, I'm going to text you over a link to this app that we use. All you have to do is click on it and then upload your pictures. That's how you remove roadblocks. Make it easy for your customers to do business with you. What kind of roadblocks can you remove for your employees? Well, don't make them go through all this rigmarole to talk to you or to do things. Oh, you got to put in a requisition request first. Well, that's stupid. I don't want to fill it out. I want to fill out a three-page form to get something from you. I have a one-on-one client right now. And I was talking to them and looking at some of their systems and stuff that they're using. And they have a form that they want their team to fill out every day. And one of the things that they have is they want to know the weather. Because a lot of times they do a lot of outdoor work. And on this form, it says, what was the weather that day? And so as someone who's looking at that as an employee, if I have to fill out a form every day, will I have to hand write it out? I'm going to get sick and tired of writing out 99% of the time, it's clear and sunny. It's clear and sunny. It's clear and sunny. It's clear and sunny. It's annoying. It's a roadblock. So how could you make that better? Well, you can have that same question, but you reword it to where it says, if it's not clear and sunny, write down the condition. Or something to that effect. It was the weather. Did it rain today? Like whatever it is that you're trying to understand, make it and word it so that it makes it easier. So it could even be like, if it was clear and sunny, skip this question. You know, if it wasn't clear and sunny, write down the weather for today. And so that way, if it's clear and sunny, they don't have to write it down. But if it's raining or windy or whatever, cold, then they would write that question down. So because I asked them, I said, well, how often does it rain? They said, I don't know, like maybe 30 days out of the year. I said, okay, so you're wanting them to fill out information that 80% of the time never changes so that the 20% of the time it does change, they have to fill it out. Does that make sense? It doesn't. So remove that roadblock because they're having troubles with their team filling out these forms. I said, there's lots of ways to make it easier. You could put it on a digital format and have dropdowns. So all they have to do is select a pre, you know, four or five questions. And instead of taking 15 minutes to handwrite, you know, answers to five or six questions every single day, now I can do it in a matter of two minutes by simply logging in to an app or something and it has dropdowns or checkboxes. And all I have to do is check, like even with the weather situation. You can have a question that says, what was the weather today? And then have five checkbox answers. It was clear and warm. It was rainy and cold. Whatever. You can just have checkboxes. Now all I got to do is check stuff. I'm much more likely to fill out a form. It takes me 30 seconds to do a bunch of checkboxes than I am to have to handwrite every single day what's going on. That's how you remove roadblocks through communication. It's the same with talking to people. Remove the roadblocks from the actual activity that you're trying to communicate. Number three is don't assume common sense. This has bit me in the ass I don't know how many times. Like multiple, multiple times. Listen, guys. Dudes and dudettes. Listen. Listen up. There's no such thing as common sense. I know. I know. I'm talking to myself here. I can't tell you how many thousands of times I've said, talked to my wife. I come home. I'm frustrated. She's like, what's going on? I'm just, guys are doing stupid stuff. Like, here's what Eric did today. It's common sense. I don't understand why it's, everybody knows that the door handle goes on this way. When you have a lever and you have the arch, everybody knows it goes with the arch up. not down. And the guys went in and put it on 15 different doors and they put them on wrong. So now we have to go back and change them. And my wife would say, yeah, but did you tell them? And I'd say, no, I didn't tell them. It's common sense. Everybody knows that the door handle arches up. And she'd say, well, if you didn't tell them, that's your fault. And she's right. It's not common sense. You have to remember, guys, that a lot of us have what they call the curse of knowledge. This is a real thing. It's called the curse of knowledge. It's hard for us as contractors to remember back 10,20,50 years ago, whatever it is, the very first time that we learned how to put on a doorknob and which way the handle goes. To us, it's common sense. It's second nature. We've done thousands of those things, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands that we've put on. We could do it in our sleep. eyes closed, blindfolded, one arm behind her back, we could do it because we know how to do it. And that's the curse of knowledge. Someone who's never done that before or has only done it a few times does not know that. That is not common sense. So take the word common sense and remove it from your vocabulary and treat everyone in every situation like it's not common. If you do this one simple task, it will change everything and how you talk to your team, and it will remove so many problems in your communication. I promise you, never assume that anything is common sense. No matter how basic it is, don't assume. We don't make any assumptions. Contractors from Hammer and Grind and the Profit Club, we don't make assumptions about anything. Don't make an assumption that something is common sense. So make sure when you want someone to do something, like install a door handle, a lever, you simply say, hey, this is how you install a lever. Just so you know, the arch always goes up. If you're confused about this, look at the packaging on the box. And the packaging on the box will have a picture of it that shows it going one specific way. That's a simple tip to understand which way the lever goes. Now, here is the caveat. If the customer wants it the other way, if they say, no, this is the way I like it, then we can change it, right? Because it's their house and the way they want it. But this is the default. Now, how could you make that even simpler? You could take a picture of a door handle and the way it's installed, and you could have that in your SOP so that whenever you assign this to little Johnny, who's going to go out there and put the doorknobs on. And he has a playbook that says, this is how we install doorknobs that are levers. This is how we do it. And there's a picture. You've removed the roadblock and you've not assumed common sense. So don't assume common sense when you're talking to someone. Number four, over-communicate so that there aren't any questions left to be asked. A lot of contractors, a lot of owners, a lot of leaders. are very busy. We get inundated with questions all day long about everything. And so we believe that quick and short responses will save us a lot of time through effective communication. So in other words, if someone says, hey, boss, what are we doing with this wall, this knee wall in this bathroom? I don't see anything on the plans or anything about exactly where it's going. And I simply say, and through a text, I respond and say, it's going to be 48 inches off the right wall. And that's all I say. It's going to be 48 inches off the right wall. All right, cool. Now, what questions could come from that? Which wall is the right wall? Is it 48 inches to the framed wall or to the finished wall? Am I measuring 48 inches from the corner or from the middle of the wall? Like there's so many questions that could be asked from that statement that I give them. So if I over communicate and I say, yes, it's going to be 48 inches from rough framed wall to rough framed wall. It's the right wall, which is also the north wall in the room. Or when you walk in the door, it's the wall to your right. Okay. And you're going to be measuring it from the middle of that wall. to the endpoint of that knee wall. Now, that's a lot of information that's going to be hard to do in text. So maybe I need to pick up the phone and call them and share that information. Maybe I use video chats. One of the things that we've used in my business was Marco Polo. It's an app on your phone. It works kind of like a walkie-talkie, but it's a video. It just sends quick videos back and forth. And you can do rear-facing camera, front-facing camera. So I can record a quick video and be like, hey, Nolan, yeah, so this is where it's going to go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Versus sending a text that says it's 48 inches off the wall. A lot of times we do those things to prevent us from having to give too much information because we think it's going to save us time. We think that by giving this short information, it's actually going to save us the time it takes to give out a very thoughtful response. In reality, what it ends up doing is biting us in the ass on the back end and actually requires us to do even more work. Because now we have to field multiple questions from the people. And it doesn't come like, hey, can you answer these three questions? A typical way is, hey, it's 48 inches off the right wall. The next question from my guy through text, which wall is the right wall? And you respond with, well, it's the north wall or whatever. And then the next question is, well, is it 48 from the finished to the finished dimension or the rough dimension? And you say, well, it's the rough dimension. And so you have this multiple questions back and forth, three or four,10 questions back and forth, and you're getting frustrated. Why can't the guys just figure this shit out? It's just common sense. Everybody knows that when you measure walls, you go from the rough framing. And everybody knows that the right wall is when you walk in the door of the room, the right wall is always the wall on the right. This shit's common sense. Why can't my guys figure this out? It's because you suck at communicating. You guys understand what I'm saying? You're not communicating effectively as a leader in your business. This is why you put out fires all day long because you're not effectively communicating with your team. I hope this is like driving home in your head now. You have to be effective with how you communicate. It takes less time, like 30 seconds, to put in that additional information in that text to say the right wall, which is the north wall,48 inches off from the middle, rough opening to rough opening. It took an extra 30 seconds to put that information in that text versus the five minutes of back and forth because text doesn't always go through right away. There's a one-minute delay. You send him a text. He looks at it, starts to measure and be like, wait a minute. Which wall is the right wall? I don't want to text him back. He's going to get pissed off at me and chew my ass out for not knowing which way is the right wall. Hey, John, do you know which one is the right wall? No, I don't know, man. I thought the right wall was the back wall when you walk in. I don't know. And then they have this five to 10 minute back and forth trying to figure it out because they don't want to call you and mess you because you're going to get all pissed off and tell them, how do you not know this shit? It's common sense. And so there's a 15-minute delay of this information being passed because you simply couldn't just give them the information that they needed from the get-go. And then you wonder where all your time and productivity is wasted throughout the day. It's because you're not giving clear, concise information and you're not over-communicating it so that there's no questions left to be asked. If you're going to send out a text, it should be something like this. It's 48 inches from the wall. Rough opening, they're rough opening. Their white wall is the north wall, blah, blah, blah. Whatever information you're giving them. And the last thing on that text should be, are there any other questions? When you start doing this, there's going to be things that you forget. And if they come back and say, yes, is it finished dimension or rough dimension? If they come back with a question to you, you need to make a note of that question. And the next time that you give out information similar to that... You need to include that question. Anytime someone asks you a question that is data, that is gold data that you need for your business. When your clients ask you a question about why is your price $30,000 more than this other contractor? That is not them being cheap. That is them trying to gain information. And that is pure gold for you. That is data. that you need so that whenever you have the next opportunity to talk to someone, you can be clear and concise in how you communicate that. You can put it in your marketing materials that you're more expensive. This is all information that is pure gold to your business. Most of you get butthurt and your ego takes over. Well, this guy, it's a red flag. When someone asks me why I'm $30,000 more, that's a red flag. Screw them. I'm not going to work for them. Those guys are cheap. All they wanted to know was why there was a difference and they were actually interested in hiring you and you just threw away a perfectly good lead because you wanted to be a jackass about it. Questions are gold. Last thing I want to talk about is provide context to why what you're doing is important. Why these decisions are being made. Well, it's none of their business. They don't need to know everything I do in my business and why we do this and that. Yeah, they do. They do. They need to know why. They need to buy into the why. There's a book by Simon Sinek that says, start with why. Whenever you're doing something, when you're presenting a product or service, when you're talking about something, always start with why. Why are we doing this? People want to know why. They want to know why they have to fill out this stupid form every day at the end of the day that ask them what the weather was like. To you, it's just a form that you want to know, but they don't know. To them, they think that you're just checking up on them. They think you don't trust them. They think that you think they're incompetent. The reality of it is you don't think any of those things. You're trying to look and see, you know, you're trying to figure out what percentage of your jobs are delayed because of weather so that you can factor that into your project timeline. So if you just check the weather each day and see how it's effective, you're collecting data so that you can be better at projecting timelines for your projects. They don't know that. They just think you're trying to check up on them. They think you're trying to find evidence and ammunition as to why they're slow. So you can come back and say, Tim, you're taking way too long on these projects. We had 10 days of pure sun, according to your report, and it took you 10 hours longer. What's going on here? That's what they think. And it has nothing to do with why you're gaining that information. So tell them why. Hey guys, I know it's going to be a pain in the ass. I know this is a large ask for me to have you guys do this. I don't even want to do it myself, but here's why we're doing it. On average, we lose five to 10 working days on our projects from rain. And a lot of times we have schedules that we're trying to meet and they get screwed up because we don't factor in weather. So I'm really trying to understand how much weather plays a part in our business. That way, I can better schedule jobs. And if we know that in the springtime, it's going to rain a lot more, I may not schedule outdoor projects during the springtime. I may push them back to summer. That way, we can be more productive, which leads to more profit, which leads to higher bonuses for you guys. So if you could do this for me, it would really help me understand better in our business. That way we can all benefit from it. Now, if that was your boss and they told you that, would you feel more likely to fill out that form? Or would you be more likely to say, this is stupid. I don't want to freaking do this. It's a waste of time. So you always need to provide context as to why you're asking your team to do stuff. They don't have to know every single detail about every single thing, but you have to give them enough information. so they can buy into it and understand how it's part of the bigger picture. This is so important, guys. And this is where a lot of us fail with communication. Communication is very long. It's very boring. It's very daunting. It's very much not fun to do. But effective communication, executive communication, leadership communication is super important. And there's no better place to example this than the military. Leadership in the military is very precise. It's very, very clear. It's very simple. It's very connected. It's very frequent. Everyone on the team knows what the mission is. They know what the contingency plans are. They know what the contingency plan is. They know everything. They know what frequencies the radios are going to be on because if the radio guy gets knocked out, somebody else has to step up and run the radio. The machine gunner gets knocked out. The A gunner steps up and operates the machine gun. Everybody knows this. It's very important to effectively communicate to your team and your employees and your customers and everybody, vendors, everybody. Be effective in how you communicate. One of my favorite quotes I'll leave you with, and I think this sums up everything. Specific is terrific. Remember that. Specific is terrific. When you're communicating with someone, I don't care who it is, specific is terrific. So that's the end of this podcast, guys, on effective communication. I hope you got some gold nuggets from this. I actually learned a few things doing some research for this one. I'm excited to do more training about this in days and weeks to come in my free Facebook group. If you want to see more training on this, jump into my free Facebook group, the Contractor Profit group on Facebook. You can also reach out to me on all of the social media platforms. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. It's easy to find there on TikTok, Instagram, all the podcasting platforms, Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Spotify. Search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. And until next time, guys, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
