Contractor Cuts
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Contractor Cuts
Strategic Goal-Setting for Contractors (2/2): Achieving Business Milestones
What if you could turn average employees into top performers by simply refining your business processes? In this episode of Contractor Cuts, Clark Turner and Jared Flowe reveal the secrets to setting high standards and achieving exceptional results in your contracting business. We'll guide you through the critical components of goal-setting, execution, and discipline, using the powerful analogy of climbing a ladder to illustrate these concepts. You'll learn how to break long-term ambitions into actionable short-term objectives, ensuring that every step you take leads you closer to your ultimate vision.
Discover how to transform visionary goals into reality by working backward from ambitious plans like retiring from your business or expanding nationwide. We discuss the importance of narrative statements, annual retreats, and personalized coaching to keep your team focused and motivated. Find out how setting concrete financial and operational targets can help you transition from hands-on roles to effective project management. Our in-depth analysis will show you how ongoing analytics can track your progress and fine-tune your strategies for sustained success.
Accountability is the cornerstone of business growth, and we'll demonstrate its power through real-life scenarios and practical advice. Learn how external perspectives can help identify blind spots and recurring issues that might be holding you back. From structured support offered by ProStruct to strategic planning for managing setbacks, discover how having a dedicated coach can propel your business to new heights. Embrace the challenge of stepping out of your comfort zone and maintaining a forward-thinking mindset to ensure continuous improvement and long-term achievement.
Struggling to grow your contracting business? The Foundations Program is designed to help contractors break free from the chaos and build a business that runs smoothly. You’ll get a customized training program, 1-on-1 coaching, and access to a full paperwork database—including contracts and the Client Engagement Agreement. Join the Foundations Program today! 🚀
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Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner, I'm Jared Flo. Thank you for joining us again this week. So last week we started this two-part series talking about goals, execution and discipline, and we talked about the importance of those three things and how they all lean on each other.
Speaker 2:Right, a goal is how we form, where we're headed, where we're going. That's our North Star. Where should we be in five years as a company? And then we go back and say, okay, let's build an execution plan as to how to achieve that goal. And then, finally, where does the discipline come in to actually follow the execution plan? Right, because those three things you pull one out. You don't have a growing company, you just have a job. You have a way to make money that, day in and day out, stays exactly the same.
Speaker 1:Well, and a great visual example of that is I want, uh, I want to get to the top of a roof right and I set a ladder on it. The rungs on those ladder are the execution right. The goal are are how to get up there, Like I want to get to the top of the roof right. The rungs on that ladder are the actual executables, the, the, the things that I need to do to get to the top executables, the things that I need to do to get to the top. And then the discipline is to step one at a time, or maybe two at a time, but making your way strategically up that in a continual, steady space, you will eventually get your goal, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you hadn't listened to the last episode, go back and listen to it now. We laid out some questions you need to be thinking through for today's podcast, but a really good place to start is that first one and then come here, because today we're talking about actually executing and how do we do that? That's right To get that started. One of the things that I think I'd like to point out to most people coming into coaching is that we need to change our acceptance of average. Right, when you've been in this doing it for a while, it's good enough. Right, that's fine. It's easier to just. This crew sucks, but you know what. They're good enough they can get it done. I've got to manage them. They usually do good work. Sometimes they don't. Increasing the quality of our product that's going out. Not allowing an average worker to be here, not allowing the average thing to happen, often means you're taking a step back. Right, if I got a fire project manager, that means I can do less revenue.
Speaker 2:But instead of saying you know what, I'll just make it work and I say this because we're guilty of it all the time Like we've done a hundred times over every, every bad step or downfall financially that this company, that our contracting company, has been through is because we've just accepted the average, we've been okay with someone who's good enough, we've been okay with you know what.
Speaker 1:Let's just get this done and it is what it is, some of it's even the devil that you know, right, and it's like ah, you know, if I have to fire this person, I don't know the impact of that. I guess you know if I have to fire this person, I don't know the impact of that. I guess you know I can deal with this and I'll just micromanage them and that poor decision every time.
Speaker 2:Well, what goes along with not accepting average is when you look at a company, when we have someone come in and start getting coaching whether they're a one man show or they've got, you know, seven employees, no matter where they're at. I mean, we've got one that came in with 18 employees, right. And so you look at them and say, if I tell you to fire anyone that's average or below, you're firing your whole company. And that is because the common problem is that you aren't setting expectations of your own processes and procedures.
Speaker 1:You haven't set the bar of excellence.
Speaker 2:Your processes and procedures, of your own company, of how you want things to operate is not high, it's low, it's whatever.
Speaker 1:Just do this.
Speaker 2:And so the leadership needed to make a seven of an employee a 10 is the processes and procedures. I can take an employee with really tight, good processes and procedures. I can take an employee that's a six or a seven. Hold them to a standard, teach them, train them, push them. If they've got gumption and they have a willingness to learn and a willingness to be molded and actually has a work ethic, I can make them a 10 all day. But if my processes and procedures are a five to six, in terms of detail, follow up, leadership, management, I can make a 10 down to a six because you've got all the skills. You got all the abilities you might be running a little bit better than my processes of how I run things, but that's all. You're going to get out of this company and you'll probably be gone soon.
Speaker 2:Because we're not performing the level of your expectations as a 10 employee Right, performing the level of your expectations as a 10 employee, right, right. And so, looking at it from a bigger picture, not accepting the average and below average performance and work and product that you're putting out, which most guys don't believe that they are and the truth is they are when we start looking at it but not accepting that starts with you setting the bar internally for yourself, for your company, through your processes and procedures. That's for your company, through your processes and procedures. That's why we force everybody write your processes and procedures. Take what we've got, take it, mold it, use it as a skeleton to build your processes and procedures that will walk along beside you, help you build. But, with that being said, we have to set a high, high goal, high, high bar when we're goal setting and when we're executing, as to how we operate as a company. And then we hold everybody to it because they're only going to be as good as I'm allowing them to be.
Speaker 1:Well, and the reason why we want to start there, when we're talking about a goals and execution of a goal podcast, is because, by nature of goals and execution, you're going to be creating systems and processes. It's just a part of that process. If I've got a goal to execute this thing by the end of the year. When you're talking about our contracting company, a piece of that is going to be systems and processes and you want to have a sense of excellence. Where I don't, the average is no longer what I'm going for.
Speaker 1:So when I'm creating, I mean literally all the way down, to like when I'm creating a credit card procedures document, I'm going to think it through, I'm going to take the time, I'm going to process through it and I'm going to make sure that it's detailed and it's done well, right.
Speaker 1:But also the other aspect of it is when you're looking at, I'm going to get to, let's just say, a million dollars revenue or five million dollars revenue, whatever it is, and you start assessing, as we spell out the process, what are the things that are hindering me or that will hold me back from getting to that? That could be crews, that could be employees, that could be an office manager, right. And so you have to look at that and say, you know what? This is kind of the average, subpar. This person has either got to be able to be led to step up and given the opportunity to step up, or they're going to have to step out. Yeah, right, and making that, you know. So it's just kind of having that mindset as you're walking through these goals and then creating the execution plan.
Speaker 2:And I also like to lead with this part when we're going into this, because execution and growth feel like, if I'm not moving forward, I'm losing. Right, I need to move forward, I need I. My next goal, that comes from you. I need to move forward, I need I. I. My next goal, that comes from you, I need to move forward. And my next, my goal, is three hires. I'm at two, so I'm just going to make my third hire when, in essence, I need to fire that second hire. It was a bad hire. They're not performing, they aren't who I thought they were, and so, if I fire them, though, I'm going down to one employee, when my goal for this year was three, and so I'm not going to do that. And so we understand do you want me to move forward or do you want me to make perfect? And it's, what are we going to accept? I'm not going to accept average. I can accept something that's flawed, but being worked on and growth happening, and I see forward movement in that employee, but I'm not going to sacrifice quality for forward movement, right, and that's where, as entrepreneurs that's why you said it's funny for not going to sacrifice quality for forward movement, right, right, and that's where, as entrepreneurs that's what you said it's funny for me to say because it's very true as an entrepreneur, I my motivating factor, which we talked about last podcast my motivating factor is forward movement. As an eight on the Enneagram, I need forward movement to be motivated. If I'm moving backwards, I am semi depressed Right. And so if I, if I don't have that forward movement, I don't get my my fill of excitement and my enjoyment that I get out of my job. So, that being said, a lot of entrepreneurs that come that start companies have the same motivating factor as I do. It's the I need to move forward, and the money's great Making money is proof that we're moving forward. And so for me, it's that forward movement and the money's great Making money is proof that we're moving forward. And so for me, it's that forward movement and for a lot of you listening it's I need to move forward, I need to grow, I need to grow, and we overlook the problems that we're stepping over to try and grow forward and it ends up being a huge issue because hiring that third person when the second person sucked, because hiring that third person when the second person sucked, I'm now dealing with two people that I'm training, and one is affecting the other, and so we're actually ending up moving backwards altogether. Anyways, I'm just trying to keep the balls juggled in the air, trying to make it work.
Speaker 2:Sometimes forward progress is backwards, yes for sure. It takes one step backwards often to go two steps forward, and so we don't like moving backwards, but assessing why do we need to move backwards? And that's honestly that's where coaching really helps. It's an outsider's view of, like, that guy's absolutely terrible. You're just holding on to him because you like him. He's your dude, he's your bro, you've gone to high school with them, right, you need to fire that guy. Or hey, this is a leadership issue. That guy could be great. What you need to do is fix how you're managing him right, and so that's the outsider's view, that the perspective that we bring as coaches in terms of, hey, listen, you're thinking through it the right way. Or hey, buddy, pause, you can't move forward until you fix what's here today, right, and so that's we want to start all of this conversation at that spot.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's I mean. One of the things that I always say is that you can't to clean up a room, you got to get it messy first. Yep, right, and that's sometimes no matter where you are. Whether you're just beginning this journey, it might get really messy before it starts getting some organization and order to it. Organization and order to it. Or you may be a little further down the road, but it's only it's one step backwards, but it's still not forward, traditional forward progress.
Speaker 2:So that's just a part of this. That's the way it works. So let's go into the three phases the goal, the execution and the discipline. So, starting with goal Jared, how am I setting my goals? What should a goal look like, what should a goal not look like, and how do we start setting up those goals?
Speaker 1:Well, the biggest thing that I would say about setting goals is that they need to be specific and they need to have time on them, right? You can't just say I want to be a $5 million company, okay, great, I mean, I guess you can, but there's, you know, you need some more specifics around that. So if you can be specific, detailed and say, by the end of this year, I want to, I want to be a $5 million company hitting 20% in profit, and I'm going to do that by hiring two employees, right? Or, you know, you can be really, really specific with it. But the very beginning of it is take a long-term goal from five years from now. I want to have retired from this business and hired in a general manager that's running it for me and I'm checking in, I'm more of a consultant, I'm in once a week, maybe once a month, but I, you know, I'm I'm the owner of the company, but I've retired from it. That's my goal five years from now. Or I want to be in all 50 States five, five years from now. It doesn't matter whatever it is, but that's your, that's your long-term and it's it's important to be able to have that long-term goal and then back it back up to a year, right? So, based on that, I've got five years from here to there, so this year I need to be to be able to get there. I'm doing a million dollars and I'm doing $850,000 in revenue as of last year. So this year I need to increase that.
Speaker 1:Well, how do I? How do I do that? So let me look at it. So let me just say I'm going to do $1.5 million, right? Then what I do is I take that and I want to qualify it. Well, $1.5 million divided by 12 months, that's X amount of revenue per month. Can I do that by myself? No, I can't do that. There's no way I'd be working 90, 100 hours a week there by myself. No, I can't do that. So there's no way I'd be working 90, a hundred hours a week. There's no way I can do that. Okay, so then maybe I need to hire or maybe you know. So that's and that's kind of getting into some of the execution piece of it. But I always start at five years, start at your big long-term goal, then back that back into. Based on that, where do I want to be? That would feel successful and successful growth towards hitting that long-term goal by the end of this year and then create a narrative statement that says by the end of this year, I'm going to do X by this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and we, we on the annual retreat in January every year, we sit down with, with the people that are there and do this, and we say, okay, what's a one-year achievable goal that you want to be at? What does one year from today look like? When you get back here next January, what does success look like and what does failure look like? And let's write those down and look at it. But let's help you assess it, because every company is different. If you are primed and ready to go as a company, you've got your processes in place, you've got a few good hires that are new and young and just coming on, you can increase by two to three X your company and revenue by next January. You might be doing 2 million now and you could get to 5 million by next January if all the parts are in place. The problem is a lot of people don't have some of those parts in place. They don't have the process, they don't have the procedures, they don't know how to hire, they don't have a process for hiring, they don't know how to pay people, all of the stuff that you have to figure out.
Speaker 2:That company might be at $2 million a year, but their goal and this actually happened with one of the guys we're coaching. Their goal was I'm not going to increase by next January in revenue, but I want my profit to go from negative 2% I think they were at to positive 10%. So I want to make $200,000 by next January. Right, I want to increase the profitability of how I'm bidding jobs, how I'm managing them, the holes in the bucket of crews that I'm paying four times to go back, how I pay them.
Speaker 2:So we need to assess each company individually and look, there's not a one-size-fits-all goal. Right, it's not. I need to double in size by next year. That might be one company's goal. That and two companies on paper look the same doing 2 million. One's trying to get the 5 million. One's trying to be profitable at 2 million. Two very good goals, depending on where you're at and what the growth you need. That's kind of where we excel as coaches with ProStruct Alliances. We sit with you and help you mold that With everyone on the retreat we work with personally, jared and I do, getting that goal the right one in place as to what 12 months from now looks like, right.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, when it comes to a goal, you know it can be something as simple as by the end of this year. I am no longer painting walls and putting on my tool bags, I'm 100% a project manager, right, and that is a 12 months from now. I can assess that. Have I achieved that? The problem with that, it is just creating a financial goal of like, okay, I want to be at X amount of dollars in revenue and profit by the end of this year, whatever that is, that is something that, month over month, week over week, I can run analytics and figure out am I running down that road or not? Right? So that's one thing that I would say.
Speaker 1:When you're talking about creating a goal, the goal needs to be financial and can roll into. Uh, you know, I want to do two and a half million dollars a year, making 20% profit on average on that, and I'm going to achieve that by no longer doing the work by self but having a bit being a project manager and managing subs on site, right. Like that's more of a specific goal of like there's a dollar amount, there's the profit, and then I'm going to do it by doing this thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So, walking towards that, let's go on into the execution side, for execution, when, when we're looking at it is I want you to look at where are you currently the weakest right? I like to start there because, until we know what needs to be fixed, there's no game plan on fixing the company, every company. There's a spot that we can be working on, no matter what our company, every company there's somewhere that, if you took a step back and looked at and said this actually right, here is the issue that's not happening, this issue with this person. I'm not good at finding good crews. I'm not good at executing the install of what I'm doing. I'm not good at this. I'm really bad at hiring people. I'm not good at communicate, whatever it is. I want to find where the weak areas are for you personally as the leader in the company, as well as the company's holes, right when what's missing here?
Speaker 1:Well, if you, if you don't know, if you can't see it, if you're like I don't, I don't know where my weak spots are, bring somebody else in. Yeah, I guarantee, maybe your friends, family, wife or completely outside third party could come in and very quickly see it. Yeah, a lot of times we just get blinded by our own crap. Yeah, you know, we're like I don't know, man, I'm just, I grinding, I'm doing everything I can possibly do, I just I can't get to the next level. And somebody else on the outside comes in and said oh yeah, you never show up on time, you tell people one thing and you don't do it. Like, well, I intend to, so I just you know, and so it's just.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, if you're not able to be honest, if you don't see it, if you don't know what that like, assess your problems, like what is the, what is the thing? If you don't know what it is, bring a third party in and they might be able to give you some clarity on that. But then there's also a question you can ask yourself. Just look back over the last month, three month, year. What is something? That is a problem that keeps happening over and over and over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when people are like no, everything's great, customers are happy, okay, so let let me help assess. So I'll pull up, you know, with someone in that position that Jared's talking about, I'll pull up their ProStrux 360 software. Look at the jobs that are in the paid section. These are the completed jobs. Let's talk through them. One, two, three. Main street how happy was that client? Oh, they were very happy. Great Broad Avenue what about that client? Well, that job kind of went sideways. They never ended up paying the final payment on it, but I just let it go because we missed this time. And they start talking about the jobs that went sideways, right. And so what I want to do is start on the whiteboard listing out what jobs went sideways and why, yeah, and then we want to take those and say, ok, out of the last three months, you've had seven jobs that you gave discounts to that went sideways, that didn't work out, and every single one you said the customer was the issue. Let's dive deeper into that. Why was the customer the issue? What processes aren't in place that communicate to the customer what the issue is? Right? And so we look at it that way and start saying, okay, let's find the root of these problems. That's where we're starting to get things fixed on the execution side.
Speaker 2:Next, I want to lay out some realistic short term goals. Right, because we have a we've we've talked about it plenty of times a growth path checklist. It's 280 something points long of every little step you need to take from starting a company all the way through duplicating your company, to multi-state, multi-city, multi-trade, and so along that path there are small things that everyone needs to execute and that's why we say there's not one size fits all. Some people are at the beginning of that path doing 2 million. Some people are at the end of that path doing 1 million. It's not a matter of where you're at financially. It's a matter of structurally where you're at, because we can grow from any spot, any spot we can grow. But you need that foundation laid because as a one-man show, I can bust my butt, get things done and be doing 5 million a year on my back. That doesn't mean we're a successful company, it's not duplicatable, I can't step out of it, I can't go on vacation. For me, that's not success.
Speaker 2:And so laying that out and saying, okay, what is realistic short-term goal? What do you need to achieve in the next six months that you don't have structurally sound. We can't tell you what that is until we talk with you and assess you as a company. But having that awareness of these holes in the current processes, these holes in the current company, the fires that keep popping up where's the gas coming from to create those fires? We look at those and those start becoming our achievable. So if there's a lot of that that you need to work on, let's not hire in the next six months. If I have stability in those things, maybe your next move is a hire.
Speaker 2:Let's assess that, let's look at that and let's build our execution plan around what needs to be done for the foundation and then what needs to be done for the growth next. That's right, that's right. So, going from there, we lay out an execution plan, we talk through it. We know exactly what, in six months, success looks like, which means what in three months success looks like, which means by the end of this month, I need X, y and Z completed. With our coaching program. We're saying, hey, we're going to call you in two weeks. Let's look at if in the next two weeks you can achieve these three things, you'll be successful. Going down your execution plan and then you meet again. You say, hey, you achieved two of the three. Let's put this third one back on the plate. Let's add a couple more things. In two weeks, let's reassess.
Speaker 1:That's the bite-sized pieces that it takes to eat the whole elephant. Well, and that's funny, because that's literally what I was just thinking is the eating the elephant. That's what I love about this aspect of what we get to do, because I can't tell you how many times that over the years that I sat down and was like, okay, I got to grow my department, I've got to develop this thing, I've got to and I'd sit down and be like God, there's so much that needs to be done. I don't know what. Where do I start? What do I do? By going through this, you've literally boiled it down and write your 10 things down. You know if you've come up with like, hey, here are 10 things. These first three are the disorder that's causing further disorder in my business. I got to get those in control before I can move and start going up the rung of the ladder Right, and so you sit down. Nothing else matters. Yeah, I don't need to come up with a hiring process right now. I need to get my jobs keep falling apart because my crew sucks. I got to get a new crew in here and I've got to be able to vet a crew better than I did my last one, simple Just work on that right and what's you know, it's the, it's the eating the elephant, right.
Speaker 1:But everybody looks at that at the front end. You got this big elephant and you're just one bite at a time. The other side of that is like it's done, I've, I've eaten this, I've, I've achieved this thing. I looked at the front end of it going there's no way I'm going to be able to achieve that Like that's. I did a million last year. My goal is 2.5. That's crazy. I never thought I'd hit a million. If you sit down every day and go, okay, how do I hit the 2 million? How do I hit the 2 million? It's just continually overwhelming, right.
Speaker 1:But if I just boil it down to all I need to work on today, is this one aspect I got to find a better crew. I got to find you know whatever. You know whatever the next steps are, but it takes them into easily executable. I can do this this week and get it done Right. The more consistency you do of that, the more, all of a sudden, you're going to get wind under your wings, wind in your sails, and you're going to look back and be like dude, I'm freaking, soaring. Yeah, this is great, yeah, this is great, yeah. And again, I've seen this happen with our coaching clients over and over and over, where we come in beside them and help create with their you know direction and their thoughts of like here's the executable plan, here's where I want to be, here's the steps that you need to do. And then they start doing that and working that. Two, three, four, six months into that they're like dude, this is, I'm killing it right now. Yeah, right. I've seen it over and over and over.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and that takes us to the third point, which is the discipline, self-discipline, and so the execution plan can be perfect. You could leave the retreat in January and say I know exactly what I need to do for the next 12 months and you feel really good, you're gung-ho, you're excited about it. Week one, you get back to the office and it hits the fan and three jobs went sideways. And Jared, you know what. We'll deal with that next week, and then the next week comes out.
Speaker 1:You know what we're going to deal with that you know what.
Speaker 2:Just give me six weeks, let's circle up then, Then we'll get started on this. Let me just put out some fires. Six weeks, let's circle up, then Then we'll get started on this. Let me just put out some fires, get things stabilized and there's some reality to that. You do need to focus on the fires and put them out, or it burns the whole company down to get it. But at the same time, how do we start building in the discipline to do the execution? So we've broken down into a couple items.
Speaker 2:Number one time blocking. We've said this a hundred times. We'll say it a hundred more times until people actually start doing it. But time blocking solely.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get up 30 minutes early. I'm going to spend an hour every Monday before my phone starts ringing, doing X, Y and Z. This is what my morning every Monday is going to look like. This is how I achieve it. I'm going to put it on my calendar. I'm going to live and die by it. I don't care if I stayed up the night before party until 2 am drinkinga lot.
Speaker 2:I'm still getting up at six to get this done and I'm going to commit to being in that time block myself and I'm going to treat that time block like it's my most important client. If I go to my most important client's house to do an estimate, I'm not on my phone, I'm not checking the emails. I'm focused on that most important client and that estimate that I'm here for for this hour. We'll do the same with my time block. Once I have my execution execution plan I sit down for that one hour and I know exactly what I should be doing and what I have to achieve. If I don't have that plan in place, I sit down for that hour. I'm like so check my emails. Ooh, I'm going to update this client about this and you're not actually achieving growth. You're still going back to the fires and what's on your plate for today? Yeah, so that's the very first one time blocking.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know I can. That's. That's one of my favorite topics, because I talk about that one a lot, yeah, one because I, I, I really stink at it and have have had to learn how to, how to be good at it. Yeah, but that goes into the next spot because, you know, what I see over and over and over is that there's a great desire to do that, but the staying on track, the consistency of that, that's why you know we last week we talked about, you know, being in the best shape of our life.
Speaker 1:I suck at going to the gym on a regular basis and staying consistent at it, but when I have done it and been consistent, it's because I've had other people, I've brought other people alongside me, I invited people into it, I did things that had, uh, that held me accountable to it, right, um, don't get down on yourself. The reality is, is that, more than is what I said last week as well, more than 90% of people just are not great at just self-discipline and that, and that's okay, right, but don't live in fantasy land. Know that about yourself and invite other people in. For accountability, which is the number two under discipline, is that. Have accountability, have people that help bring you back in and say hey, man, you're rabbit trailing down that direction. You got to get back on track or you're going to run down that way and look back and realize you hadn't gone anywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Right. Well, I think one of the great examples of this is having a client that says you know what I need to build my hiring process because my next move is a hire Great, Okay, so let's. In two weeks from now, let's have an outline of what you're. I'm going to send you our you know, the pro-struct hiring process. We got a 10 step how to hire, but I need you to personalize it around your company, how you're going to do it, where you're going to do it. I send that to the guy I'm coaching. He looks at it in two weeks, let's, let's assess what you've done. We get back together. I just I've been too busy. I didn't get to it. This happened in this client call. I landed this huge multi you know, hundreds of thousands of dollar job, so I had to focus on that this week. Great, In two weeks, let's look at this. Can you get?
Speaker 1:this done? Yeah, Most of the time after the second one, I look at them and go, hey, let's look back what this is. This is twice now that we've pushed this. What's causing you not?
Speaker 2:to get this done. Yeah, and without accountability. I'm keeping me to do this. I keep me to this. The accountability side says, hey, you're trying to achieve a step that's probably further down the road than what you need to be at. What we need to do is back out and figure out why you can't find the time to do this. What's going on with that? Let's go back to the time block. Let's go back to assessing how your jobs are operating. How your jobs are operating. Let's. Let's take a step back, cause I don't think you're ready to do that. If you can't get to do that, right, right. And so, looking at that from an outsider's, it might take you six months to get to a spot of like. I still haven't done this.
Speaker 2:If you're on your own with us, with a coach, by by week three, week four, we're like hey, something's going on here. You're not, you're losing it. Time out, time out. Let's have a meeting, let's talk about it. What's going on here? Let us help, right. And so the accountability is the outsider's view of. We don't want to. We don't make excuses for the reasons things aren't getting done. Naturally, you're going to make excuses for yourself. I don't care what happens, I care that you're honest with me. I care that you're following and doing what you say you're doing, and if you can't achieve something, there's a reason. So don't come lie to me that you've done it if you haven't.
Speaker 1:I don't care about it. That's not helping me.
Speaker 2:No, I'm here for you and the growth of your company. So let's be real and be honest why this isn't getting achieved. And so that's the accountability side alone that will help your growth happen quickly, efficiently and effectively, because we start troubleshooting the hurdles that you keep running into, that you can't get past.
Speaker 1:Well, and I don't care who you are. I think anybody who is running a business needs to have an outside person that is helping and holding them accountable. Not your spouse, not your spouse. Yeah, that's a poor decision, but you can get somebody who's good at business, get somebody.
Speaker 1:It's difficult to find somebody who's, you know, going to be an accountability person that's in the same business as you. Yeah, which is actually why it's really beneficial for you know, joining the coaching program here is because we're motivated for your success, yeah, and we have a tremendous amount of experience and understand what you're going through because we've walked it, we've walked those shoes. So it's a kindred spirit of accountability, like, I understand, I get it, but I'm here and motivated for your success, and so when you come with problems, issues and things that you're going through on a daily basis, I understand it, I get it and I can empathize with it, but I can also see down the road and go, okay, cool, I get that, but if then we're not going to get here, and with coaching, with accountability, what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:We've got three levels of accountability and coaching within ProStruct. We've got the boot camp, which is a once a week group meeting that you meet every Friday and go through with Jared. You're on it. That is a check-in point that is super inexpensive. It is, you know, it's a couple hundred bucks a month is what it averaged out to be. It's not a lot of money, but it's a great place to start to get weekly accountability. That I know I'm going to sit down for this one hour every Friday morning to go through this stuff and kind of build my foundation.
Speaker 2:Next up, we have our growth level, which is a once a month meeting. You get personalized paperwork. You get us, you know, jared's meeting with you once, or one of our coaches are meeting with you once a month, right, looking, assessing. And then we've got our executive, where you have Jared and I both on your executive team. We're helping you make decisions. Call us anytime. So we have different levels depending on what you need. This isn't unach achievable accountability and help. Come in on the base level and work your way up to what you can afford. But having someone volunteer their time to be your accountability partner is very risky in short term because you can't demand stuff of them if you're not paying them. If you're paying for it, you can demand that we show up every Friday. We're your coach, you're paying us to be there for you and to help. So not to go on a side tangent of self-promotion, but it's just true.
Speaker 1:But it's part of being disciplined and accountability.
Speaker 2:Start somewhere and have it locked in. Have a commitment to keeping yourself accountable Because obviously, if you could have grown further than where you're at today, you would have Get some help on that, yeah, yeah. Last thing on our discipline list is getting back on the horse. So many times we see people fail, move backwards and just say it's just, that's where it's at. Yeah, right and just and just.
Speaker 1:Which is inevitable. Yes, it's going to happen. Yes.
Speaker 2:And so having someone again not pushing the coaching but pushing coaching, having a coach say, hey, that's normal, we fail, that's okay, you're going to fail. You're going to fail again and you might fail at the exact same thing next week, that's okay no-transcript.
Speaker 1:He's been on a coaching program almost a couple of years now and I've seen him go from the guy that's like dude Jared, I just don't have time. I see what you're saying. I just don't have time. I've got this and that fire and this thing. I've seen him go from that guy who had a tremendous amount of gumption and work ethic but there was no direction and growth in his business, right To somebody who's understood the value of having goals, having systems and processes and then having time management around that and the like, security and the, the peace of mind that comes from that.
Speaker 1:When he falls off the wagon because it happens, right, you got a fire that I just have to put my boots back on and I got to get out there and get it done he actually creates a plan and says, okay, I am going to go out here, I have to do, do this, I'm going to do it, but by the end of the week it's done. And so he actually creates a plan around his backsliding or whatever you know what I'm saying Like going back into where he used to be, where he doesn't want to live. He knows that if he's not careful, he'll stay there for a month, two months, three months, and so what he does is say this has to happen, but I'm going to give myself a time limit by the end of this week, by the end of next week, by the end of this month, whatever it is. That's when this is going to be done and I'm going to get back to business as usual.
Speaker 2:And that makes it achievable. That gives yourself some leash, because a lot of us live in that and have lived there for years in our business, which is the firefighting mode that's almost comfortable to us, it becomes a default.
Speaker 2:It's like I'm just, I'm good at this, I'm an executor, I can, I can throw the belt on and go do the work myself, whatever it is I fall back into we all do. And so falling back into the execution side of getting things done, that's what we're good at, that's what started our company, that's what got us here. But understanding, hey, I'm going to give myself some leash, but this has to be done by Friday, and next Monday I'm sitting down and doing this. I don't care if I'm here until midnight on Friday. I'm not going to let this project, this issue, whatever it is, bleed over and steal from my company and my future.
Speaker 2:And so, assessing and seeing that and shooting off an email or text to your coach saying, hey, just so you know, I'm taking a pause this week on what we talked about. I'm going to spend this week getting these things cleaned up. Call me on Monday, let's hit, let's, let's, let's circle up, right, those type of conversations, accountability and getting back on the horse when you fall off and say, hey, I, I've this is everything's blown up. I've got seven clients angry. I'm just going to handle that right now. I'm going to pause growth because growth is putting these fires out currently, and that's okay, that's allotted. We don't want to live there, though, so yeah, that's a great example.
Speaker 1:I think the reality is that what we're saying is different than the way that you normally work, yeah Right, which means it's uncomfortable. It's it requires an additional effort, it requires a different brain power, it requires me being strategic about the way that I use my time, and that's it's. It's uncomfortable, it's difficult, it's different, right, and if we're not careful to get back to a place of comfort, I'll just go back to that place. Yeah Right, I'll just go back to that place of running and gunning and grinding and dealing with it as it comes up and being reactive in the way that I'm going, and you'll look up and three months, six months, a year will go on by and nothing's happened.
Speaker 1:Right, to go to a new place, you have to go through uncomfortable things, and that's that's a part of this. Create your goals, then create the specific executables that you need to achieve to get to that goal and then hold yourself accountable and stay in that mindset on a regular basis. Or bring somebody else in that's going to help you stay in that space and hold you accountable. Then you're going to get to the end of the year and you'll finally have achieved a year that you get to the end of and you're like, I'm not where I want to be, but this year was successful. I've made forward progress, I'm better, I've learned more, I've made more money. Right, that's, that's the there's. There's not a better feeling than that. There's been plenty of years that we've just, you know, in our GC company, we've gone to the end of the year and like, well, I mean, we worked really hard.
Speaker 2:This year Reset. Let's go again, let's just do it again.
Speaker 1:But the years that we created a goal of whatever 5 million and we hit 3.85. But it was above and beyond what we did the year before. We created a bunch of new systems and processes. We've been able to hire in good people because we learned from our mistakes. The year before we got to the end of the year we didn't hit the $5 million that we wanted to, but it felt good because we made forward progress. We're in a good trajectory. There's nothing better than getting to the end of the year and be like you know what.
Speaker 2:That was a successful year. Yeah, you know. Yep, if you want to have a free conversation about how to do this for your company and assess, go to our website, go to the contact us and reach out. We love to hop on Jared and I could be on a Zoom with you, talk you through it. We are long-term partnerships with you. So if today's not the day that you're ready to sign up for coaching, no problem. Get some sort of directional help. Get someone to look at your company and say you're doing it right, you're doing good. Come on the retreat in January, right, we would love to have you there. We'd love to chat with you about what that looks like and how to get there. But come on the retreat, get a jump start right now. We're nearing the end of the year, going into the fourth quarter. Now's the time to start thinking about how are we going to change next year from what we did this year. And maybe you're doing great this year. Hopefully you are. Let's keep that momentum going for the next step. Let's continue that down the road. Let's make sure the foundation's there and keep you growing. So if you want that, go to our website, go to the Contact Us, reach out. We'd love to set up a Zoom with you If you need a software to manage this.
Speaker 2:We don't talk about our software very often, but the ProStruck 360 software is the basis of everything we're doing here. It is a way to organize, manage and set a foundation of how my processes work on every job site that we're on. So we have a free version, we have paid versions. I'd suggest a complete version. It's $199 a month to get your company organized. You can send invoices, estimates, you get online payments. All that stuff happens within the software One click of the button. It keeps your QuickBooks updated. It keeps everything updated. Very sophisticated software. If you're interested in it, sign up for free ProStruck360.com. Check it out. Love to have you on that, love to talk to you about coaching and I'd really love to see you on the retreat in January. Yeah, if you're listening to this and you're interested, please reach out. All right, all right, guys. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week Later. Thank you.
