In this episode, Tyler talks about breaking free from the cycle of overworking and losing sight of why he started his business. He shares personal insights on creating systems, delegating tasks, and prioritizing life balance to build a more sustainable and profitable business.
Show Notes:
Escaping the Hustle Trap: Introduction and Personal Reflection (0:00)
The Real Problem: Revenue vs. Freedom (2:09)
The Impact of Long Hours on Personal and Business Life (4:40)
Delegating Tasks and Finding Efficiency (9:52)
The Importance of Saying No and Maintaining Confidence (14:18)
Balancing Work and Personal Life (16:39)
Consulting and Support for Business Owners (25:44)
The Real Problem: Revenue vs. Freedom (2:09)
The Impact of Long Hours on Personal and Business Life (4:40)
Delegating Tasks and Finding Efficiency (9:52)
The Importance of Saying No and Maintaining Confidence (14:18)
Balancing Work and Personal Life (16:39)
Consulting and Support for Business Owners (25:44)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tyler Grace (00:00):
The symptom of the problem is that you are working
(00:02):
12 hours a day, 16 hours a day.That's not the problem itself.
So you are addressing thesymptom rather than treating the
problem. And the problem is morethan likely with your business
or with yourself. Welcome backto another episode of midweek
modern craftsmen, most of usstarted our business for
(00:25):
freedom, but somewhere along theway, we became the bottleneck.
In this episode, I am sharing astory that made me stop and
think about the way that I usedto run my business and what
finally made me change. So a fewnights ago, I was heading back
from one of our daughterssoftball games, and it was
(00:46):
around 830 at night. It'salready pretty dark out. There
weren't too many cars on theroad, and I passed a buddy of
mine shop, and his truck wasbacked up to the bay door. The
lights were still on, and Icouldn't tell exactly what he
was doing, maybe wrapping up along day, maybe loading up for
the day tomorrow. But what wasclear to me was that the day was
(01:07):
not over for him, and that hitme pretty hard, because that
used to be me, that used todefine me, that was really what
I hung my hat on, that i i Couldoutwork anyone, that I could
grind it out more, more so thanmy competition. And maybe that
was instilled on me wrestlinggrowing up, that if you put in
(01:31):
the hard work, if, if you workedwhen other people were sleeping,
you know that the results andthe success at that point would
be inevitable, but passing byhis shop this night, really, it
hit me, because that's not mylife anymore, and I enjoy my
(01:52):
life so much more now, and Idon't hang my hat on the fact
that I grind And it's not abadge of honor for me. And I'm
not skipping dinner. I'm not,you know, going back to work
after the girls go to bed. I'mnot missing sporting events and
events at school. But it doesn'tfeel like it was that long ago
(02:17):
that I did, and it doesn't feelthat I'm that far removed from
it back then, it felt like itwas what I had to do to make it
right. I just kept tellingmyself, I just started my
business. I would get to a pointthat this would change, but it
won't change until you changeit. And it didn't change until I
changed it specifically. But atsome point I just, I had to ask
(02:41):
myself, What exactly am I makingby doing all of this? So here's
what they don't tell you, whenyou start a business, that it's
not just about revenue or theamount of trucks that you have
on the road. It's not about theamount of employees that you
have or or how you know whatyour what your top line was that
(03:04):
your or bottom line, for thatmatter, sometimes, in the
pursuit of quote, unquote,making it, we lose sight of why
we started it in the firstplace, which was, for me,
freedom, because I love thework, because I enjoyed making
things because I enjoyed makingpeople happy, transforming a
(03:24):
space really just buildingsomething with my hands, and it
became this grind and that thatwas really my badge of honor,
that was, again, what I hung myhat on. And I lost sight of all
the reasons that I did this, andI think that my ego got in the
way. And I wanted more trucks onthe road. I wanted a bigger
(03:47):
business. I wanted a higherbottom line. I wanted to be
working in a certain area anddoing certain jobs, yeah, for
the challenge, but also to beable to say that's what I was
doing. And again, driving by mybuddy shop the other night just
(04:10):
was a pretty strong reminder onhow grateful I am now that I'm
home for dinner, that I don'tmiss out on those games, that I
get enough sleep, that I'm nothospitalized, I'm not hustling
as much as I was, and I am likeI still hustle to a certain
extent. I still grind it out,but it's on my own terms. It's
(04:32):
not because I didn't bid a jobcorrectly, or it's not because
my clients need to be in by acertain date. It's because I'm
choosing to do so and every nowand then there, yeah, I'm not
gonna lie, there's the thedeadline that you know makes you
push through, typically, the endof a project. But it's not every
(04:54):
day. It's not 830 at night thatI'm loading up for the next day
I. Monday through Friday, Sundaynight. I never was one really to
work weekends. Every now andthen I would have to, but that
that wasn't my MO when you're inthe thick of it, when you're
(05:15):
building the business, whenyou're wearing the tool belt,
when you are managing subsemployees, it's hard to step
away from that. It's hard tozoom out. It's hard to see how
this is impacting your life, andit's hard to realize the mess
that you've made, because you'rereally just concerned with
keeping your head above water.It becomes normal. It becomes
(05:38):
your life. We tell ourselves,you know, this is just business.
This is part of owning abusiness. You know, anyone who
works for somebody elseessentially is a part time job.
And I think that, yeah, there,like, there's a certain aspect
of running a business thatyou're gonna have to spend a
little more time. You have morestake in it than anyone else.
(06:03):
It's not always easy, andthere's certain stress, and we
own that, but it doesn't have tobe that way every single day.
And maybe by chance, you know mybuddy just, it was a late night
for him, a one off night, but Ijust I felt that it's not that
long ago that I was there andwhen I was in it, it wasn't
(06:26):
easy, but I didn't realize howbad it was until I stepped away
from it and I removed myselffrom it, and I had some clarity
as to what I was doing and howit was affecting me and how it
was affecting my family. And atthe end of the day, it wasn't
really making me much moremoney, to be completely honest,
a few things that I have learnednow or or that I know now, that
(06:49):
I wish I had known a little bitearlier, is that profit is more
than just revenue. It's it'seasy to get caught up in that
top line of a project, right?You land a $200,000 kitchen,
you're like, This is my biggestkitchen, and it might look great
on paper, but if you're walkingaway with barely enough to
support your lifestyle or payyour bills, it's not really a
(07:10):
success. It's just stress anddisguise. Every job that you
take should serve your bottomline and your long term goals,
and if you are not pricing forprofit, you're just buying
yourself a job, and you'reworking at the expense of your
clients, and it's a job,typically, that you cannot quit.
(07:33):
Another thing that I've learnedover the years is that systems
give you freedom, and I learnedthis with my children as well,
though I don't implement them aswell at home as I do in
business. But you know, if mykids know that they go to sleep
every night at nine o'clock,that actually gives them
freedom, rather than some nightsyou go to sleep at 10, sometimes
(07:55):
you go to sleep at eight, theyknow their schedule. They know
how much time they have left,when they have to get in the
shower when they have to brushtheir teeth, it actually creates
freedom, not only for them, butfor us. I didn't always believe
this when it comes to work, whenit comes to business, I thought
that they were reserved,typically, like these systems
and these SOPs were for bigcompanies with staffs, a ton of
(08:17):
employees. But now that Irealize systems are for small
companies as well, and they cancreate profit, and they can
create freedom, more so thananything else. And just because
you are a small business doesn'tmean that you shouldn't have
your own systems. They don'thave to be these extremely
intricate, robust systems, butyou have to have systems. You
have to have processes in orderto grow to scale, to hire
(08:41):
somebody, to train somebody, youhave to have systems in place.
They create the freedom, theycreate the standards. They
create profitability for yourbusiness. Without systems, you
are oftentimes just reacting towhat's happening, rather than
having a plan in place. Preconstruction, is a system for me
that really changed a lot. Iknow that we've dug in to that a
(09:03):
lot, but that was that was oneof the big changes that I made
in my business that really mademe reconsider the way that I was
doing things, and that led to meunderstanding the amount of time
that I had budgeted andallocated to a job, and then how
to manage that on the back andto guarantee that I was as
(09:25):
profitable as I anticipated, oris as close to profitable as I
anticipated. Again, reallyseparating myself from the ego
there and and manning a job,managing a job to expectation
and to budget, rather than to myneeds, my wants and
(09:45):
perfectionism.
Another thing is, you don't haveto do it all. Being a small
business owner, we often feelright. We're the we're the
estimator, we are thesuperintendent, we're the
project manager, we're theclient. Liaison. We're everyone.
We wear every hat. And whilethat's true to a certain extent,
(10:07):
and I still do that to a certainextent, there are things that
you can allocate and assign toother individuals, and it could
just be things that you don'twant to do, or things that
you're not good at, but you haveto realize that your time is
best spent somewhere, and itcould be from like an efficiency
(10:27):
standpoint, it could be from avalue perspective, but your time
is best served somewhere. So youhave to find that out with your
client base. I just had aconsulting call with a guy this
morning, and he's wearingmultiple hats, and he's having
trouble managing the volume ofwork that he has in place. And
(10:48):
what's, excuse me, I just hit mymicrophone. What what's ending
up happening is he's justspending too much time in all of
these areas that he shouldn'tbe, and he's not able to charge
for them, and there's a ton ofinefficiency due to that. And
running around in this sense,you don't you can't gage what
your true costs are. You can'tgage where your time is best
(11:09):
spent. You can't capture hoursif you have no metric for the
amount of hours that you'respending. So find things that,
find things that you canallocate to other individuals,
that you can assign to otherindividuals, that suits their
strengths and also suits yourstrengths. Find what you're
(11:33):
really good at, where your timeis the most valuable, and spend
it there. Approach this from aprofitability perspective,
because at the end of the day,we're in business to make money,
and if you are not profitable,you're not going to be
sustainable, and you're lying toyourself about the type of
business that you have. There'sways that I make money. There's
(11:56):
aspects of my business thatdon't make me money. So I would
rather spend my time on thetasks that have the highest
impact from a profitabilityperspective, and that also comes
outside of construction as well,right? If there's if there's
opportunities in my life thatcan make me more money than what
(12:20):
I'm doing in construction, andit still fulfills me. I have to
understand that there's anopportunity cost there, and
where is my time best spent?What type of lifestyle does that
provide for me? And how should Iallocate my time? Because I
(12:40):
shouldn't be doing everything. Ishouldn't be doing tasks that
I'm not good at, that I'minefficient, that I can pay
somebody to do that free me upto do things that are more
profitable or higher impact. Soas soon as you realize you don't
need to do everything, that youdon't have to do everything, and
you can't do everything, youhave to, you have to pass those
(13:01):
tasks off, and then you have tounderstand how to capture those
costs. I think when we doeverything ourselves, oftentimes
we we're not capturing the cost,and we're doing it to provide
value through competition andthrough really price point. And
(13:23):
if you were to allocate those,allocate those tasks, sooner,
you would realize that that's acost that you need to recoup,
you need to capture. It needs tobuild into the cost of your
doing business, which sets youin the right direction. From a
business perspective, I suggestthat people start small with
this. For me, it wasbookkeeping. I realized early on
(13:46):
that I was taking time afterwork to try and fumble and
stumble my way throughQuickBooks, and I was paying for
a QuickBooks membership when Icould hire a bookkeeper, I could
get rid of my QuickBooks accountand membership and pay a
bookkeeper, and it would be lessthan the cost of my monthly
(14:09):
membership, as well as the timethat I was having to pull away
from the job or not see my kidsor not sleep. So that small fee
that I could very easilyintegrate into my business was
then captured through anoverhead rather than me doing it
(14:30):
for free after work at night,fumbling my way through that.
Another huge skill that Ilearned that's been very
valuable, is saying no, and thisis, in fact, a skill the wrong
job will wreck your schedule,your margins and your mental
health. For me, my physicalhealth, the wrong client or
(14:52):
wrong clients make you doubtyour own worth and diminish your
confidence. And that's not goodfor any of us. I've had
consultants. Calls with peoplewhere, I swear I just needed to
get on the call with them andtell them that, yeah, you had a
couple jobs that didn't go yourway. You lost a couple of jobs.
But you can't lose sight ofeverything that you've done. You
need to maintain yourconfidence. Need to understand
(15:12):
that your processes, yoursystems, are all dialed you're
just having a little bit of badluck. And I think that when we
begin to lose confidence inwhatever aspect of our life is,
but especially business, westart to question everything
that we do. We start toquestion, are we too expensive?
Is this the right sub? Is thisthe right employee? Am I
spending my time where I shouldso I think maintaining that
(15:33):
confidence through idealclients, through the correct
clients, and steering clear ofthose toxic clients or clients
that make you question your selfworth or your value, is one of
the most profitable things thatyou can do. Every no will make
space for the right yes. And alot of times we think that that
no is going to cost us moneyjust due to loss of work, but
(15:58):
you have to understand that ifyou can say no, and you can
focus on your business, or youcan line up the right job, that
not only are you going to impactyourself immediately, but down
the road, you're going to getmore of those same type of jobs
through referrals, throughtestimonials, through
experience, through capturingcontent and marketing yourself
around those type of projectsand those type of clients. So
(16:21):
it's a, it's a, possibly a shortterm concession for long term
strides. Your Time matters alot. And as business owners, we
often are squeezing 26 hoursinto a 24 hour day, and we think
(16:42):
that, you know, we can justcontinue to make more time. We
can get up earlier. We can stayup later. Most people are bound
to an eight hour work day, andwe can work 14. We can work 16.
It doesn't matter as much as youwant to work. And I did that,
and it didn't work out so wellfor me. The only reason I find
that people are working morethan they have to is because
they're under charging, becausesomething went wrong, because
(17:03):
they don't know their numbers,because they can send everyone
home, and they can continue toput free work in place to try
and catch up. So I think that ifyou're making your rate, if
you're making the money that youneed to, and you want to work
more than eight hours, that'sfine. You can hustle, you can
make the a little bit moremoney. But if you were doing it
(17:25):
because you're behind, orbecause there's not enough
budget to pay people to do thework, or because you're not
capturing those costs, thenyou're you're not running a
sustainable and a profitablebusiness. Time is the only thing
that we don't get back. Youdeserve to be there for your
people, for your family, foryour business, for your clients.
(17:47):
And that needs to be amanageable amount of time. You
can't be working 1216, hours aday, every single day of your
life. There needs to be time forother, other things. You can't
continue to plant seeds whilesomebody else watches them grow.
You need to be present withinyour own life. The bottom line
(18:11):
here, right is that owning yourbusiness doesn't mean you have
to be owned by it. And I wasowned by my business for a very
long time. I'm not going to sithere and pretend that I have it
all figured out that every dayis, you know, sunshine and
rainbows. I've made everymistake that you can make. I've
overbooked myself. I've mostcertainly undercharged. I've
(18:33):
over promised, under delivered.I've done the weekend thing time
to time, you know, I've skippedmeals, I've lost sleep, I've
wound up in the hospital, andit's crazy that, like, I just
thought that was normal. Ithought that was part of it. And
I think that a lot of us thinkthat that's part of it, but it's
not. It shouldn't be. And again,maybe my buddy was just having
(18:55):
one late night, but maybe he'sin the the cycle that I was and
he's a bit trapped, and thatthere's a lot of nights like
that, and I hope that he or youor everyone can gain some
clarity and understand that ifyou're having to put that much
time into it, it's not workingLike the conversation I had with
(19:20):
Nick if your business, you know,can make a quarter million
dollars, but you're working 100hours a week. Is it worth it?
Are you, you know, you can'tjust say I'm making a quarter
million dollars. You're reallymaking less than half of that
because you're working over 2xwhat you should have to so don't
(19:43):
lose sight of that. Be honestwith yourself, be open.
Understand the amount of timethey're putting into it. And
there's going to be long days,there's going to be hiccups,
there's going to be mistakes.That's everything in life,
that's every business, that's ifyou work for somebody or you
work for yourself, but it can'tbe every day you. Um, if your
business needs that much of yourtime and consumes you that much,
(20:05):
you don't have the right systemsin place, and something's wrong
and you need to dig into it andfigure out what's going on. It's
not me anymore. I don't do thatanymore. Again, push, pushing a
job, closing a job out, youknow, holidays, weekend, push.
There's times where I have towork more than I want to, but
(20:26):
it's not all the time, andtypically, if I'm working more
than I want to, it's it'sbecause of my own program. It's
not because I'm forced to orbecause I left money on the
table, because I'm not capturingthose costs. Again, I think that
most of us work more than wehave to because something's not
right. We didn't. We didn't.We're not capturing our costs.
(20:48):
We didn't account for somethingcorrectly, and we're trying to
put extra work in to make uptime and get back on track. And
we get caught in that cycle ofdoing that for too long, and
instead of actually addressingthe issue that, hey, there's
something with my process that'sincorrect. There's something
with my business that thenumbers are off, whether it's my
(21:11):
estimating, whether it's mybudgeting, whether it's my
management on the back end,something's off that's creating
an issue. And we think the issueis just that we need to catch
up, and once we catch up, it'llbe better. But the fact of the
matter is that we typicallynever catch up. So I would look
at what the root cause of it is,rather than treating the symptom
(21:32):
of the problem. Right? Thesymptom of the problem is that
you are working 12 hours a day,16 hours a day. That's not the
problem itself, so you areaddressing the symptom rather
than treating the problem, andthe problem is more than likely
with your business or withyourself. Again, I'm still
working, I'm still makingmistakes, I'm still trying to
sort all of this out, but I'm ina better place than I have been.
(21:56):
Life's more enjoyable. Businessmore enjoyable. Business is more
profitable I find the less thatI work, the more I can focus on
business and dial my processes,the more profitable I am,
actually, the less I have towork, because I can put less
work into place and make what Iwas making before putting two,
3x into place. So if you're inthat season now, the late
(22:18):
nights, the early mornings, alot of pressure, a lot of
stress. I see you and I feelyou, and I've been there, and I
respect the hustle, but I alsowant you to know it doesn't have
to be that way forever. There'sa there's a better way. And I
think a lot of times we tellourselves it's what we want, and
this is what we you know, thisis who we are. This is why I get
into this. But many times it'sjust ego getting in the way. And
(22:42):
it's not, I'm not here to tellyou that it's necessarily about
doing less. It's just aboutdoing the right things at the
right time, the right way, sothat that version of me at 830
at night, loading the truck,loading up for the next day on a
Sunday night, Tuesday night,Wednesday night, whatever it is,
it's not that far gone, and thatthat guy is still there
(23:08):
sometimes, but he's more of theexception than the rule. So
every dinner at home, everybedtime, every weekend spent not
catching up on paperwork, everynight that I actually get eight
hours of sleep. Those momentsare proof that change is
possible. And if I can change,if I can do it, you definitely
can. It just takes a decision,and then it takes some changes,
(23:31):
and again, treating the problem,not the symptom. This, this
podcast, this blog post, whichalso go on the website, minor
craftsman.co, check out the blogpost as well. They're a little
bit different than the podcast.It was obviously brought on by
(23:51):
by seeing this, experiencingthis the other night, and seeing
my buddy work super late. Also acouple of recent consulting
calls with clients, wherethey're just at a point where
they feel like they're spinningtheir wheels and they're unsure
of how to navigate thetransition, whether they need to
scale, as far as bottom linegoes, whether they need to
(24:16):
create efficiencies, Whetherthey need to just better capture
their hours. What whether theyneed to increase their margins
or find ways to increase theirmargins. Of a handful of people
have been running into thislately, and it seems as though,
right, they grew. They grew. Themarket was booming. They grew
(24:38):
because they had to provide forcontractors. They had to provide
for clients, and they didn'twant to say no, and it seemed
like opportunity. And things arefinally slowing down, and
they're realizing what the heckthat I just do for the past four
or five years, and they don'twant to continue down that path.
They don't want to continuetrying to put more work in a
place. They want to simplifythings. They want to scale back.
(25:00):
Back. They want to be able toput less work into place and
have better margins. And theywant to understand how to
capture those numbers, or evenjust how to how to gage and
quantify those numbers in thefirst place, on bigger jobs,
smaller jobs, whatever they maybe. So if that's something that
you are interested in, if you'reexperiencing that, if you want
to hop on a consulting call,shoot me an email, Tyler at TRG,
(25:23):
home concepts.com and we candiscuss what that looks like,
what my schedule looks like. I Ido a couple a week. I try and
keep my schedule. I try not tobook out that far in advance,
because I'm not sure what threeweeks from now might hold for me
day to day, so I just don't wantto put too much pressure on
(25:43):
myself. But if there'ssomething, you know, I just had
somebody reach out where theyneeded something sooner than
later, and I squeaked it into myschedule week of so if there's
something that you just feellike you're in a pinch, you're
in a bond, you want someanswers, you want you want to
discuss what's going on, or findsome enlightenment, shoot me an
email. Tyler at TRG, homeconcepts.com, and let me know. I
(26:05):
appreciate everyone stickingaround. I appreciate everyone
who's been listening to thepodcast, sharing the podcast.
Nick and I and Doug have someexciting news coming up. Um,
actually traveling to Bostontomorrow to film some stuff in
person, trying to switch thingsup a bit little bit of a
different vibe to the podcast,doing some more conversations
(26:26):
with Nick and myself, digginginto business issues, life
issues. So I'm excited for that.We're just looking to switch
things up. There's a lot ofpodcasts out there right now,
and we are looking, as always,to elevate, not remain stagnant
and continue to move forward. Soif you have any suggestions,
wants, needs, shoot us an email.Hello at modern craftsman.co or
(26:49):
Tyler at TRG, home concepts.com,hope you all enjoy Your week,
and I will catch you next week.You
The symptom of the problem is that you are working
(00:02):
12 hours a day, 16 hours a day.That's not the problem itself.
So you are addressing thesymptom rather than treating the
problem. And the problem is morethan likely with your business
or with yourself. Welcome backto another episode of midweek
modern craftsmen, most of usstarted our business for
(00:25):
freedom, but somewhere along theway, we became the bottleneck.
In this episode, I am sharing astory that made me stop and
think about the way that I usedto run my business and what
finally made me change. So a fewnights ago, I was heading back
from one of our daughterssoftball games, and it was
(00:46):
around 830 at night. It'salready pretty dark out. There
weren't too many cars on theroad, and I passed a buddy of
mine shop, and his truck wasbacked up to the bay door. The
lights were still on, and Icouldn't tell exactly what he
was doing, maybe wrapping up along day, maybe loading up for
the day tomorrow. But what wasclear to me was that the day was
(01:07):
not over for him, and that hitme pretty hard, because that
used to be me, that used todefine me, that was really what
I hung my hat on, that i i Couldoutwork anyone, that I could
grind it out more, more so thanmy competition. And maybe that
was instilled on me wrestlinggrowing up, that if you put in
(01:31):
the hard work, if, if you workedwhen other people were sleeping,
you know that the results andthe success at that point would
be inevitable, but passing byhis shop this night, really, it
hit me, because that's not mylife anymore, and I enjoy my
(01:52):
life so much more now, and Idon't hang my hat on the fact
that I grind And it's not abadge of honor for me. And I'm
not skipping dinner. I'm not,you know, going back to work
after the girls go to bed. I'mnot missing sporting events and
events at school. But it doesn'tfeel like it was that long ago
(02:17):
that I did, and it doesn't feelthat I'm that far removed from
it back then, it felt like itwas what I had to do to make it
right. I just kept tellingmyself, I just started my
business. I would get to a pointthat this would change, but it
won't change until you changeit. And it didn't change until I
changed it specifically. But atsome point I just, I had to ask
(02:41):
myself, What exactly am I makingby doing all of this? So here's
what they don't tell you, whenyou start a business, that it's
not just about revenue or theamount of trucks that you have
on the road. It's not about theamount of employees that you
have or or how you know whatyour what your top line was that
(03:04):
your or bottom line, for thatmatter, sometimes, in the
pursuit of quote, unquote,making it, we lose sight of why
we started it in the firstplace, which was, for me,
freedom, because I love thework, because I enjoyed making
things because I enjoyed makingpeople happy, transforming a
(03:24):
space really just buildingsomething with my hands, and it
became this grind and that thatwas really my badge of honor,
that was, again, what I hung myhat on. And I lost sight of all
the reasons that I did this, andI think that my ego got in the
way. And I wanted more trucks onthe road. I wanted a bigger
(03:47):
business. I wanted a higherbottom line. I wanted to be
working in a certain area anddoing certain jobs, yeah, for
the challenge, but also to beable to say that's what I was
doing. And again, driving by mybuddy shop the other night just
(04:10):
was a pretty strong reminder onhow grateful I am now that I'm
home for dinner, that I don'tmiss out on those games, that I
get enough sleep, that I'm nothospitalized, I'm not hustling
as much as I was, and I am likeI still hustle to a certain
extent. I still grind it out,but it's on my own terms. It's
(04:32):
not because I didn't bid a jobcorrectly, or it's not because
my clients need to be in by acertain date. It's because I'm
choosing to do so and every nowand then there, yeah, I'm not
gonna lie, there's the thedeadline that you know makes you
push through, typically, the endof a project. But it's not every
(04:54):
day. It's not 830 at night thatI'm loading up for the next day
I. Monday through Friday, Sundaynight. I never was one really to
work weekends. Every now andthen I would have to, but that
that wasn't my MO when you're inthe thick of it, when you're
(05:15):
building the business, whenyou're wearing the tool belt,
when you are managing subsemployees, it's hard to step
away from that. It's hard tozoom out. It's hard to see how
this is impacting your life, andit's hard to realize the mess
that you've made, because you'rereally just concerned with
keeping your head above water.It becomes normal. It becomes
(05:38):
your life. We tell ourselves,you know, this is just business.
This is part of owning abusiness. You know, anyone who
works for somebody elseessentially is a part time job.
And I think that, yeah, there,like, there's a certain aspect
of running a business thatyou're gonna have to spend a
little more time. You have morestake in it than anyone else.
(06:03):
It's not always easy, andthere's certain stress, and we
own that, but it doesn't have tobe that way every single day.
And maybe by chance, you know mybuddy just, it was a late night
for him, a one off night, but Ijust I felt that it's not that
long ago that I was there andwhen I was in it, it wasn't
(06:26):
easy, but I didn't realize howbad it was until I stepped away
from it and I removed myselffrom it, and I had some clarity
as to what I was doing and howit was affecting me and how it
was affecting my family. And atthe end of the day, it wasn't
really making me much moremoney, to be completely honest,
a few things that I have learnednow or or that I know now, that
(06:49):
I wish I had known a little bitearlier, is that profit is more
than just revenue. It's it'seasy to get caught up in that
top line of a project, right?You land a $200,000 kitchen,
you're like, This is my biggestkitchen, and it might look great
on paper, but if you're walkingaway with barely enough to
support your lifestyle or payyour bills, it's not really a
(07:10):
success. It's just stress anddisguise. Every job that you
take should serve your bottomline and your long term goals,
and if you are not pricing forprofit, you're just buying
yourself a job, and you'reworking at the expense of your
clients, and it's a job,typically, that you cannot quit.
(07:33):
Another thing that I've learnedover the years is that systems
give you freedom, and I learnedthis with my children as well,
though I don't implement them aswell at home as I do in
business. But you know, if mykids know that they go to sleep
every night at nine o'clock,that actually gives them
freedom, rather than some nightsyou go to sleep at 10, sometimes
(07:55):
you go to sleep at eight, theyknow their schedule. They know
how much time they have left,when they have to get in the
shower when they have to brushtheir teeth, it actually creates
freedom, not only for them, butfor us. I didn't always believe
this when it comes to work, whenit comes to business, I thought
that they were reserved,typically, like these systems
and these SOPs were for bigcompanies with staffs, a ton of
(08:17):
employees. But now that Irealize systems are for small
companies as well, and they cancreate profit, and they can
create freedom, more so thananything else. And just because
you are a small business doesn'tmean that you shouldn't have
your own systems. They don'thave to be these extremely
intricate, robust systems, butyou have to have systems. You
have to have processes in orderto grow to scale, to hire
(08:41):
somebody, to train somebody, youhave to have systems in place.
They create the freedom, theycreate the standards. They
create profitability for yourbusiness. Without systems, you
are oftentimes just reacting towhat's happening, rather than
having a plan in place. Preconstruction, is a system for me
that really changed a lot. Iknow that we've dug in to that a
(09:03):
lot, but that was that was oneof the big changes that I made
in my business that really mademe reconsider the way that I was
doing things, and that led to meunderstanding the amount of time
that I had budgeted andallocated to a job, and then how
to manage that on the back andto guarantee that I was as
(09:25):
profitable as I anticipated, oris as close to profitable as I
anticipated. Again, reallyseparating myself from the ego
there and and manning a job,managing a job to expectation
and to budget, rather than to myneeds, my wants and
(09:45):
perfectionism.
Another thing is, you don't haveto do it all. Being a small
business owner, we often feelright. We're the we're the
estimator, we are thesuperintendent, we're the
project manager, we're theclient. Liaison. We're everyone.
We wear every hat. And whilethat's true to a certain extent,
(10:07):
and I still do that to a certainextent, there are things that
you can allocate and assign toother individuals, and it could
just be things that you don'twant to do, or things that
you're not good at, but you haveto realize that your time is
best spent somewhere, and itcould be from like an efficiency
(10:27):
standpoint, it could be from avalue perspective, but your time
is best served somewhere. So youhave to find that out with your
client base. I just had aconsulting call with a guy this
morning, and he's wearingmultiple hats, and he's having
trouble managing the volume ofwork that he has in place. And
(10:48):
what's, excuse me, I just hit mymicrophone. What what's ending
up happening is he's justspending too much time in all of
these areas that he shouldn'tbe, and he's not able to charge
for them, and there's a ton ofinefficiency due to that. And
running around in this sense,you don't you can't gage what
your true costs are. You can'tgage where your time is best
(11:09):
spent. You can't capture hoursif you have no metric for the
amount of hours that you'respending. So find things that,
find things that you canallocate to other individuals,
that you can assign to otherindividuals, that suits their
strengths and also suits yourstrengths. Find what you're
(11:33):
really good at, where your timeis the most valuable, and spend
it there. Approach this from aprofitability perspective,
because at the end of the day,we're in business to make money,
and if you are not profitable,you're not going to be
sustainable, and you're lying toyourself about the type of
business that you have. There'sways that I make money. There's
(11:56):
aspects of my business thatdon't make me money. So I would
rather spend my time on thetasks that have the highest
impact from a profitabilityperspective, and that also comes
outside of construction as well,right? If there's if there's
opportunities in my life thatcan make me more money than what
(12:20):
I'm doing in construction, andit still fulfills me. I have to
understand that there's anopportunity cost there, and
where is my time best spent?What type of lifestyle does that
provide for me? And how should Iallocate my time? Because I
(12:40):
shouldn't be doing everything. Ishouldn't be doing tasks that
I'm not good at, that I'minefficient, that I can pay
somebody to do that free me upto do things that are more
profitable or higher impact. Soas soon as you realize you don't
need to do everything, that youdon't have to do everything, and
you can't do everything, youhave to, you have to pass those
(13:01):
tasks off, and then you have tounderstand how to capture those
costs. I think when we doeverything ourselves, oftentimes
we we're not capturing the cost,and we're doing it to provide
value through competition andthrough really price point. And
(13:23):
if you were to allocate those,allocate those tasks, sooner,
you would realize that that's acost that you need to recoup,
you need to capture. It needs tobuild into the cost of your
doing business, which sets youin the right direction. From a
business perspective, I suggestthat people start small with
this. For me, it wasbookkeeping. I realized early on
(13:46):
that I was taking time afterwork to try and fumble and
stumble my way throughQuickBooks, and I was paying for
a QuickBooks membership when Icould hire a bookkeeper, I could
get rid of my QuickBooks accountand membership and pay a
bookkeeper, and it would be lessthan the cost of my monthly
(14:09):
membership, as well as the timethat I was having to pull away
from the job or not see my kidsor not sleep. So that small fee
that I could very easilyintegrate into my business was
then captured through anoverhead rather than me doing it
(14:30):
for free after work at night,fumbling my way through that.
Another huge skill that Ilearned that's been very
valuable, is saying no, and thisis, in fact, a skill the wrong
job will wreck your schedule,your margins and your mental
health. For me, my physicalhealth, the wrong client or
(14:52):
wrong clients make you doubtyour own worth and diminish your
confidence. And that's not goodfor any of us. I've had
consultants. Calls with peoplewhere, I swear I just needed to
get on the call with them andtell them that, yeah, you had a
couple jobs that didn't go yourway. You lost a couple of jobs.
But you can't lose sight ofeverything that you've done. You
need to maintain yourconfidence. Need to understand
(15:12):
that your processes, yoursystems, are all dialed you're
just having a little bit of badluck. And I think that when we
begin to lose confidence inwhatever aspect of our life is,
but especially business, westart to question everything
that we do. We start toquestion, are we too expensive?
Is this the right sub? Is thisthe right employee? Am I
spending my time where I shouldso I think maintaining that
(15:33):
confidence through idealclients, through the correct
clients, and steering clear ofthose toxic clients or clients
that make you question your selfworth or your value, is one of
the most profitable things thatyou can do. Every no will make
space for the right yes. And alot of times we think that that
no is going to cost us moneyjust due to loss of work, but
(15:58):
you have to understand that ifyou can say no, and you can
focus on your business, or youcan line up the right job, that
not only are you going to impactyourself immediately, but down
the road, you're going to getmore of those same type of jobs
through referrals, throughtestimonials, through
experience, through capturingcontent and marketing yourself
around those type of projectsand those type of clients. So
(16:21):
it's a, it's a, possibly a shortterm concession for long term
strides. Your Time matters alot. And as business owners, we
often are squeezing 26 hoursinto a 24 hour day, and we think
(16:42):
that, you know, we can justcontinue to make more time. We
can get up earlier. We can stayup later. Most people are bound
to an eight hour work day, andwe can work 14. We can work 16.
It doesn't matter as much as youwant to work. And I did that,
and it didn't work out so wellfor me. The only reason I find
that people are working morethan they have to is because
they're under charging, becausesomething went wrong, because
(17:03):
they don't know their numbers,because they can send everyone
home, and they can continue toput free work in place to try
and catch up. So I think that ifyou're making your rate, if
you're making the money that youneed to, and you want to work
more than eight hours, that'sfine. You can hustle, you can
make the a little bit moremoney. But if you were doing it
(17:25):
because you're behind, orbecause there's not enough
budget to pay people to do thework, or because you're not
capturing those costs, thenyou're you're not running a
sustainable and a profitablebusiness. Time is the only thing
that we don't get back. Youdeserve to be there for your
people, for your family, foryour business, for your clients.
(17:47):
And that needs to be amanageable amount of time. You
can't be working 1216, hours aday, every single day of your
life. There needs to be time forother, other things. You can't
continue to plant seeds whilesomebody else watches them grow.
You need to be present withinyour own life. The bottom line
(18:11):
here, right is that owning yourbusiness doesn't mean you have
to be owned by it. And I wasowned by my business for a very
long time. I'm not going to sithere and pretend that I have it
all figured out that every dayis, you know, sunshine and
rainbows. I've made everymistake that you can make. I've
overbooked myself. I've mostcertainly undercharged. I've
(18:33):
over promised, under delivered.I've done the weekend thing time
to time, you know, I've skippedmeals, I've lost sleep, I've
wound up in the hospital, andit's crazy that, like, I just
thought that was normal. Ithought that was part of it. And
I think that a lot of us thinkthat that's part of it, but it's
not. It shouldn't be. And again,maybe my buddy was just having
(18:55):
one late night, but maybe he'sin the the cycle that I was and
he's a bit trapped, and thatthere's a lot of nights like
that, and I hope that he or youor everyone can gain some
clarity and understand that ifyou're having to put that much
time into it, it's not workingLike the conversation I had with
(19:20):
Nick if your business, you know,can make a quarter million
dollars, but you're working 100hours a week. Is it worth it?
Are you, you know, you can'tjust say I'm making a quarter
million dollars. You're reallymaking less than half of that
because you're working over 2xwhat you should have to so don't
(19:43):
lose sight of that. Be honestwith yourself, be open.
Understand the amount of timethey're putting into it. And
there's going to be long days,there's going to be hiccups,
there's going to be mistakes.That's everything in life,
that's every business, that's ifyou work for somebody or you
work for yourself, but it can'tbe every day you. Um, if your
business needs that much of yourtime and consumes you that much,
(20:05):
you don't have the right systemsin place, and something's wrong
and you need to dig into it andfigure out what's going on. It's
not me anymore. I don't do thatanymore. Again, push, pushing a
job, closing a job out, youknow, holidays, weekend, push.
There's times where I have towork more than I want to, but
(20:26):
it's not all the time, andtypically, if I'm working more
than I want to, it's it'sbecause of my own program. It's
not because I'm forced to orbecause I left money on the
table, because I'm not capturingthose costs. Again, I think that
most of us work more than wehave to because something's not
right. We didn't. We didn't.We're not capturing our costs.
(20:48):
We didn't account for somethingcorrectly, and we're trying to
put extra work in to make uptime and get back on track. And
we get caught in that cycle ofdoing that for too long, and
instead of actually addressingthe issue that, hey, there's
something with my process that'sincorrect. There's something
with my business that thenumbers are off, whether it's my
(21:11):
estimating, whether it's mybudgeting, whether it's my
management on the back end,something's off that's creating
an issue. And we think the issueis just that we need to catch
up, and once we catch up, it'llbe better. But the fact of the
matter is that we typicallynever catch up. So I would look
at what the root cause of it is,rather than treating the symptom
(21:32):
of the problem. Right? Thesymptom of the problem is that
you are working 12 hours a day,16 hours a day. That's not the
problem itself, so you areaddressing the symptom rather
than treating the problem, andthe problem is more than likely
with your business or withyourself. Again, I'm still
working, I'm still makingmistakes, I'm still trying to
sort all of this out, but I'm ina better place than I have been.
(21:56):
Life's more enjoyable. Businessmore enjoyable. Business is more
profitable I find the less thatI work, the more I can focus on
business and dial my processes,the more profitable I am,
actually, the less I have towork, because I can put less
work into place and make what Iwas making before putting two,
3x into place. So if you're inthat season now, the late
(22:18):
nights, the early mornings, alot of pressure, a lot of
stress. I see you and I feelyou, and I've been there, and I
respect the hustle, but I alsowant you to know it doesn't have
to be that way forever. There'sa there's a better way. And I
think a lot of times we tellourselves it's what we want, and
this is what we you know, thisis who we are. This is why I get
into this. But many times it'sjust ego getting in the way. And
(22:42):
it's not, I'm not here to tellyou that it's necessarily about
doing less. It's just aboutdoing the right things at the
right time, the right way, sothat that version of me at 830
at night, loading the truck,loading up for the next day on a
Sunday night, Tuesday night,Wednesday night, whatever it is,
it's not that far gone, and thatthat guy is still there
(23:08):
sometimes, but he's more of theexception than the rule. So
every dinner at home, everybedtime, every weekend spent not
catching up on paperwork, everynight that I actually get eight
hours of sleep. Those momentsare proof that change is
possible. And if I can change,if I can do it, you definitely
can. It just takes a decision,and then it takes some changes,
(23:31):
and again, treating the problem,not the symptom. This, this
podcast, this blog post, whichalso go on the website, minor
craftsman.co, check out the blogpost as well. They're a little
bit different than the podcast.It was obviously brought on by
(23:51):
by seeing this, experiencingthis the other night, and seeing
my buddy work super late. Also acouple of recent consulting
calls with clients, wherethey're just at a point where
they feel like they're spinningtheir wheels and they're unsure
of how to navigate thetransition, whether they need to
scale, as far as bottom linegoes, whether they need to
(24:16):
create efficiencies, Whetherthey need to just better capture
their hours. What whether theyneed to increase their margins
or find ways to increase theirmargins. Of a handful of people
have been running into thislately, and it seems as though,
right, they grew. They grew. Themarket was booming. They grew
(24:38):
because they had to provide forcontractors. They had to provide
for clients, and they didn'twant to say no, and it seemed
like opportunity. And things arefinally slowing down, and
they're realizing what the heckthat I just do for the past four
or five years, and they don'twant to continue down that path.
They don't want to continuetrying to put more work in a
place. They want to simplifythings. They want to scale back.
(25:00):
Back. They want to be able toput less work into place and
have better margins. And theywant to understand how to
capture those numbers, or evenjust how to how to gage and
quantify those numbers in thefirst place, on bigger jobs,
smaller jobs, whatever they maybe. So if that's something that
you are interested in, if you'reexperiencing that, if you want
to hop on a consulting call,shoot me an email, Tyler at TRG,
(25:23):
home concepts.com and we candiscuss what that looks like,
what my schedule looks like. I Ido a couple a week. I try and
keep my schedule. I try not tobook out that far in advance,
because I'm not sure what threeweeks from now might hold for me
day to day, so I just don't wantto put too much pressure on
(25:43):
myself. But if there'ssomething, you know, I just had
somebody reach out where theyneeded something sooner than
later, and I squeaked it into myschedule week of so if there's
something that you just feellike you're in a pinch, you're
in a bond, you want someanswers, you want you want to
discuss what's going on, or findsome enlightenment, shoot me an
email. Tyler at TRG, homeconcepts.com, and let me know. I
(26:05):
appreciate everyone stickingaround. I appreciate everyone
who's been listening to thepodcast, sharing the podcast.
Nick and I and Doug have someexciting news coming up. Um,
actually traveling to Bostontomorrow to film some stuff in
person, trying to switch thingsup a bit little bit of a
different vibe to the podcast,doing some more conversations
(26:26):
with Nick and myself, digginginto business issues, life
issues. So I'm excited for that.We're just looking to switch
things up. There's a lot ofpodcasts out there right now,
and we are looking, as always,to elevate, not remain stagnant
and continue to move forward. Soif you have any suggestions,
wants, needs, shoot us an email.Hello at modern craftsman.co or
(26:49):
Tyler at TRG, home concepts.com,hope you all enjoy Your week,
and I will catch you next week.You
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