In this episode of the Leveled Up Contractor Show I share with you how to stop working in the business instead of on the business. As Construction Business Owners we often worked our way up from working in the field to owning and operating a real construction business. However, if you want to get to the next level you have to figure how to work on your business not in it.
We often forgot as we turn more into a leader and executive that we can’t continue to do all the things that got us to where we’re at. We have to start handing those responsibilities off to our employees and focus on the big picture items that will take our business to the next Level. In this video you will see real life examples of that plus a tool you can use to manage big projects to work on your business and get them implemented.
What we cover:
- How to plan “high value” activities for growing your business.
- The secret weapon tool we use to organize and keep track of tasks.
- Lots of examples of high value implementation items you can use to grow your business.
- And a whole lot more. This is a powerful episode!
Transcript:
Welcome to another episode of the level of contractor show. I’m glad to have you here, because today we’re talking about how to work on your business instead of in your business. And I’m going to show you a really cool tool that you can use to keep yourself accountable and really set yourself up for success to actually work on your business this year, instead of working in it, and instead of getting dragged back into the day to day. That way you can focus on where you want to be and not end another year, not having accomplished anything major that’s going to change your business.
So guys, let’s talk about what working in your business versus working on your businesses actually means. And I think as owners and high level managers, we often get pulled into the day-to-day of the business and the reason being is often times as high-level managers and owners, we’re the best people at solving problems. People know that they can come to you to solve problems.
Let’s face it, you’re a problem solver! You have the authority to make decisions, so they bring stuff to you. And when that happens they’re constantly pulling you into the day-to-day business. And, you know, think about those problem customers that you’ve been brought in to handle that collection issue, or, Hey, you need to come look at this job or, Hey, I’m not sure how to estimate this or whatever the case may be.
You’re constantly having employees pull you into the business. And some of us just like it, we came from the production side or the sales side. So it’s just natural for us to dive into the details of the business. And what I want to encourage you guys to do is step away from being the problem solver and start working on your business.
If you have plans to get to different places, you need to start focusing on the big picture items that are going to help you get there. For example, a big picture item is building the systems and processes in your business, so you’re probably doing a lot of things in your business.
You probably have a lot of systems in your business, but do you have them documented? Are your people following them or is it kind of chaotic and you just and put out fires as things come up, that’s just one example. Maybe you’re looking to expand to more locations, so you need to be out there and looking for different locations or looking at real estate or looking for good people to hire to help increase the value of your business.
I could go on and on all day about the reasons why you should be focusing on working on your business instead of in it. But let’s talk about what it actually looks like. So guys, the program that I have opened up in front of me is called Asana.
Work On Your Business With Asana
Asana is a project management tool and the way I’m going to show you how to use it in this training is to schedule big picture items and set tasks. This way you’re actually focused this year on working on your business. So the way we’re going to break this down, you know, typically most contracting businesses, we break our departments up in a couple of different ways.
Your business functions might be called something different than ours but lets make some example categories. In Asana I got a new project here. I just call it example strategic plan implementation, and that’s what we’re going to work from.
The first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to add a section. And we’re going to call this section marketing. All right. In the case of, our business, you know, we have lead setters people that answer the phones, that call out on incoming leads, all that kind of stuff. And we have marketing generating those leads.
So, that department is going to be in here. We’re going to create a section for sales. Let’s add another section here for production and we’ll do one here for Accounting. Actually we’ll call this accounting and admin. And like I said, guys, yours might be a little bit different, but in most businesses there’s marketing, sales, production or operations and some aspect of accounting, finance, and administrative.
So you may break it up however you want, but this is how we’re going to do it in this training. And now that we have this set up, let’s look at the different areas and things that we want to accomplish in our business. And let’s start putting some things in there. Now, one thing you got to be careful with when you’re doing this guys right now, we’re not setting goals.
We’re not setting sales targets, not that kind of stuff. We’re looking at the stuff that we can implement into our business. That’s going to have a major impact and then may not be right away. But it’s building those systems, those tools, those things that are really get you to the next level. So for example, let’s talk about our sales department and let’s, add a task here under the sales department and let’s do this.
Create a documented sales training program. So a lot of us, you know, we may have a sales system. We may have something that we teach, but is it documented? You know, so many people that I work with, they have a sales system, but usually when they bring someone on it, isn’t like they can give them documents or videos or tools to train with.
It’s usually, Hey, come with me. I’ll show you how I sell. I’ll show you where to log in to the CRM. I’ll show you the contract documents. I’ll give you those templates, but it’s nothing formal. It’s nothing set up. It’s nothing optimized. And you look at it months later and you’ve got a guy that’s doing okay, but he could have been selling in two to four weeks and crushing it way further along.
So having a documented sales training program. So I’m just giving you guys some examples of some of the things that you could do. Let’s talk about marketing. Let’s add one for marketing, create a brand style guide, so we’re creating a guide that makes all of our marketing consistent. So this could be color codes.
This could be all the different logos you’re going to use. Maybe you’re going to create a mascot for your brand. You know, all these different ideas. You could do some stuff like that. We’ll work , create a content calendar and make 100 videos to post online. So big picture stuff. That’s going to get you some leads here and there, but overall, it’s going to get you a hundred videos that are out there working as marketing assets for your business.
What are some things that you could implement in your production department, maybe create new work order and material order templates for all trades. So standardizing our work order and material order templates for the different trades we have, maybe it’s creating and getting subcontractor agreements. You sign off on subcontractor agreements, so getting your documentation with your subcontractors in a formal agreement, what’s some stuff with accounting and admin let’s let’s think about here.
What are some big picture items that we could focus on in accounting and admin? Collections is always a big one here. Build out a collection procedure based on the number of days in RR for example, one of the trainings that we have in our Leveled Up Contractor program was a workshop where we showed our clients how to set up an entire AR system that’s down to the day, you know, day one, this happens day 15. This happens day 30. This happens day 45. This happens and collection letters are going out and phone calls are being made and automated emails are being sent to customers. So building something like that for your collection process, maybe you implement a weekly cash flow meeting.
What are some other things you could do in sales? We could create and simplify all estimate templates. We could set up, follow up automations in the CRM. So guys, just trying to think of different ideas, big picture ideas that are going to set you up to grow to the next level.
Let’s add a section. Let’s call this company. And maybe we do one that we have all of our clients do. And that is document your “master system.” So basically documenting your process from the time a new lead comes in all the way until that job has paid him for and closed. So creating a document that documents that entire procedure, maybe you want to create employee role manuals and job descriptions.
Employee Role Manuals & Job Descriptions
So imagine a new employee comes onto your team and they’re handed a binder. That binder has your company’s mission and it has your core values in it. It has all your different policies and procedures in it, but it also has all the SOP’s for the role that they’re coming on board for. So imagine you’re hiring a lead setter into your company and they come in. And they get this manual that basically shows them how to do all this stuff.
How to take a phone call, how to transfer phone calls, the different scripts they might be using, how to enter a lead in your CRM, how to schedule a sales rep, how to put things on the calendar. So all these different things that they would do in their role inside of a manual.
Think about it for your sales guys. They come in, they get the binder and it has all the SOP’s on how to estimate, how to follow up with customers. You know, where to do this, how to do that, all that kind of stuff for their specific role. And you could do this across the entire company. Now, this one is a big one. If you’re trying to do this over a small time period, like 90 days or even a year, creating a role manuals for every position in your company can be tough.
So you could even move it down into a different group. Like maybe you just want to create the sales employee role manuals, right. Or maybe you want to create project manager, role manuals.
Brainstorm Ideas To Work On Your Business
So guys, you could go on and on for days with this, but I want you to take some time, take some time to just write out some notes.
Just spend some time by yourself for a little bit and start jotting down. Some things that would be game changers in your business that would help take you out of it. Maybe it’s even making a key hire and creating a killer onboarding process. Think of the things that are taking up your time right now,
Are you constantly going out to jobs to deal with problem customers? Maybe you could build some SOP’s about how to handle problem customers. Maybe you could build some processes to avoid problem customers. Maybe you guys aren’t solving the root issue. Maybe you’re solving the customer problems, but you’re not solving the things that are causing those problems.
Maybe it’s communication stuff. Maybe it’s project management, maybe it’s follow-up stuff. So look at the things that are causing you to work in the business day to day and start creating some implementation items and things that you are going to do. And then guys from there, it’s about setting up, who’s responsible for it,
So maybe this, for example you could add your entire team into Asana and you could start sending this out to people. Now, obviously I only got a couple people in this specific Asana project, but you can assign it to people. You can assign due dates, right? We say, you know, I want to get this done in Q1.
So I want to have this done by March 31st. And we put that in there and boom. Now I got a due date on that. Maybe, this one, I would assign it to my head of marketing and say, this is one that’s not going to take us a lot of time. Let’s have that done by the middle of February. So let’s have that done by Friday the 18th.
And guys, you could go through this. What I recommend you do is you start out with a brainstorm. You come up with some ideas of things you’re going to implement this year, and then you start looking at them. Okay. When are we going to implement these? Okay, well, these look like Q1 things. You know, we’re probably, if we’re working on these, we probably won’t get to this till Q2 and you get together as a group with your leaders in your business and the people that are going to be responsible for implementing these things along with you.
And they’ll have some ideas for their departments that you didn’t think about, or maybe they have some ideas for other departments, but you guys come together, create a strategy like this, break them down into who’s going to be responsible for what, when they’re due. And guys put a focus on it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget about all this other stuff.
That’s going to take your business to the next level.
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