Episode 110 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
At the end of the day, success isn’t about how hard you can work. It’s about building something that’s scalable, that’s sustainable, that gives you the time and the money and the freedom and the life that you’ve been searching for. And that can’t happen when you’re addicted to this business. It’s about enjoying your business and it’s about enjoying the fruits of your labour from your business at the same time. G’day everyone Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group, and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den. Good to have you back, Dan. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Good to be back, Rob. Hi everyone. Yeah, feeling really good today. This is an important topic. I’m going to say this one is today. It’s an important one to talk about. It’s a difficult one to live with, but it is very important that we do talk about it. And most people know when they’ve crossed a line, right? You know inherently when something’s off and it can feel subtle at first, but at some point, the momentum builds to that level where you recognise things are no longer serving us the way they did. And work addiction’s one of those things. And when we talk about work addiction, what does it look like and when is it an issue? It’s different for everyone, but at the same time, hours become too long, right? 70, 80, 90 hour weeks, pulling all nighters, no end in sight, that sort of thing.
(01:22):
Family gets forgotten, like you said at the top, physically present, mentally absent. It’s those sort of things. And people have stopped asking you to even show up. It’s like they’ve written off the fact that, well, you’re not going to be around. We’ll just carry on. The other thing then is isolation kicks in. And there’s no mates outside of work. There’s no hobbies. There’s no life beyond business and that’s all there is. Other one is you can’t switch off. Even when you’re meant to be relaxing, you’re mentally on start, you’re mentally in the job. There is absolutely no downtime from mental space in terms of your mind and what’s going through there. So if any of that sounds familiar, you probably already know that it feels a little bit off. And today we’re not going to explore what that feels like or the dangers of what that can do and all those sort of things.
(02:10):
What we’re going to really talk about, you already know that inherently. Instead, we’re going to cover two things that we really want to focus on, on how to break that addiction or at least examine it a little bit more closely and become a little bit more aware of it. And the first thing we’re going to talk about is this idea of giving yourself permission. And it’s a huge one in terms of contemplating and thinking about addiction without going into shame mode, I call it. So giving yourself permission’s a huge start.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
If you think about what addiction is, it’s a grooved behaviour over a period of time. And a lot of people think that addiction is social media, drinking, drugs, smoking, all those types of addictions or behaviours that anyone might have over a period of time. But no one really talks about the addiction to work. And it’s a real thing. We’re not negating that having running a business requires hard work, but the dopamine hits that you get from building a business and running it and all those types of things. There’s a real thing that you can become addicted to it. And the worst thing is you convince yourself that it’s just part of the job, just part of running a business. But it’s about the antidote to that is giving yourself permission to break it and see what’s possible on the other side of it. It’s a permission-based thing, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
It is. And thinking about that, it’s about giving yourself permission, which is where we’re coming from on that positive side. The feeling without it when you’re in the midst of the work addiction is you feel like you’ve got no permission to do these things. So again, you’re right. If you think about permission as a seesaw and it sits in the middle almost, permission’s the thing that sits in the middle and it’s either the feeling of I’ve got no permission to do this or I need to give myself permission to do this. And if we look at that in concrete examples, the first one you can talk about is the permission about work hours. And I know this is one we see all the time, right? And it baffles us to an extent, this permission to not start at 5:00 AM or be up at 4:00 AM being the first one in the office every single day.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
When you think about a tradie, that most of them start early and finish early. That’s just how tradies work in the marketplace. And it’s funny that that becomes a pattern of behaviour. It becomes a groove that you have from when you’re an apprentice to a tradesman, to a leading hand, to site supervisor, and then into starting your own business. And when you started your own business, you were a tradie on the tools. So you carried that patterned behaviour through into running your own business. And even though you might be semi-off the tools, we see it so much that even though they’re running a one to two or $3 million trades business, they’re still starting at 6:00 AM in the morning wearing their high vis, the first one there to open up the door of the office and open up the workshop if they’ve got one.
(05:05):
And it’s like, mate, what are you doing? Like you run this business. You don’t have to be the first tradie here in the morning. It’s just a pattern of behaviour. They’ve grooved, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. But I’ve got to be there, Rob. I’ve got to be the one that opens the gate for the guys so they can get in. If I don’t do that, no one will be able to get in. It’s like someone can surely open a gate that’s permission to not start at 5:00 AM. This is how this conversation starts right. But the concept is so foreign. And this is what we’re talking about. This is when you recognise it, it’s sort of like, oh, okay, that feels weird. And that’s how you will feel. Another one then, if we go on from there is permission to say no at the other end of the day. Night work, for instance, that’s another big one.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. Sometimes you’ve got to work at nighttime. There’s things that need an important thing that needs to get done. But I think sometimes you can get caught again in that pattern of behaviour of, and I know I was there for a long period of time and I still do it from time to time where it’s like put the kids to bed and it’s 7:30 or 8 o’clock at night and then you just sit in front of the laptop and you get caught in that pattern of behaviour doing between 8:00 and 10:00 PM at night and sit down and having a wine or something like that. And you’re just punching out admin or quotes or doing some working on the business stuff. And then that just becomes a pattern of behaviour. It becomes just a normal part of life. But unless you’re aware of it, and if you don’t challenge it and give yourself permission to not do it, you kind of just get stuck in that rhythm and routine of doing things without actually questioning, why the hell am I doing this?
(06:37):
Why am I here sitting at nighttime doing that? Is it because you need to be or is it a low value task or are you just in that pattern of behaviour doing it without even realising?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah. And your world starts to become dependent on that. It becomes filled in. And before you know it, it’s now something that has to be done. There’s no permission or you feel like you’ve got no permission to say no, there’s that other side again. The other one is a big one is permission to be home for the kids. And I think this is one that is broader than just the business owner. This is sort of a society-wide type thing, but permission to be home for your kids is a big topic. And again, it’s one though that someone who’s in work addiction will struggle with. We see it all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah. It’s like, I just can’t do it. I just can’t make it work. But I’m sure there’s other things in your diary where you put it in your calendar and you make it work. It’s like yesterday, Jack had an appointment she had to go to and she’s just like, “Hey, I’ve got to get to this appointment.” I’m like, “It’s all good. I’ll pick up the kids and I’ll take them swimming lessons.” And booked it in the diary and we had that conversation a week ago and we just reprioritized and shuffled things around it. And it’s like, “Yep, we’ll make it work.” And we made it work. And it’s amazing. The whole place didn’t burn down and things still carried on and we just gave myself permission to make it work. We just did it. It would work, but we planned for it. We prioritised it and we worked around it.
(07:58):
So you could probably do it more than you realise. You just got to be able to give yourself permission to be able to go, “You know what? I can do it because when you do give yourself permission, it forces you to take hats off. It forces you to shed those low value tasks. It forces you to change and it forces you to break that pattern of behaviour where you start early, finish late, that’s just a pattern of behaviour that you’ve grooveed yourself into over a period of time.”
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah. And we’ve talked about this before, wearing your exhaustion as a badge of honour and that sense of sacrifice and suffering. And at some point it’ll be all worth it. You just wait and see. But working 70 hours a week, just because you think that’s what business owners do and grooving that to the point where you feel like there’s no other option, that’s not the way to go about it. That’s just exhausting. And I think when you get to the other side and you start to give yourself permission, the next little challenge I heard all most business owners face, and again, we’re probably speaking from a lot of experience here, is like, “Well, what else would I do? What else is possible?” So the next challenge really is seeing what else is possible out there, seeing the possibility in the world beyond work and hearing the fact that there is another way.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And that’s why Pravar exists. We are dead against businessmen in the trade space flogging their guts out, thinking they have an either or mentality, either a great business or a great family life. We take a stance against that and we’ve shown time and time again and shown it’s why we do the podcast here. It’s why Pravar Group exists because it’s totally possible to be able to build a great business and build wealth and be a great husband and father and be a present family man and live a good life. The possibilities are there. And there’s got to be a point in time where you see that and believe it’s possible within yourself. It starts with belief, starts with permission to think something different and starting to see and give yourself the possibilities that it’s totally possible. But when you start to believe it, then it’s like, right, I’m going to start making change and make this possibility a reality, which is the exciting part.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah. And that’s where you open up to the fact that I need to learn some new skills and I might suck at this, but I’m going to go on this journey, all the things that we talk about at Pravar and developing those skills to help make it happen, whether it’s leadership, the ability to delegate your systems. We’ve been talking about financial acumen on the podcast lately. Until you give yourself permission and see a possibility of what could be better or how it could be done differently, you won’t make any of those changes. You won’t book in for your call with you. I mean, these are the reasons why people don’t make that change and don’t shift because you can’t see the possibility of things unless you’re actively looking for it.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And that’s why this episode is a mindset matters because we’ve said it a number of times that mindset always precedes strategy because if you’ve got the mindset that no one’s as good as me and it saves me time and energy and money, if I do it myself and the longer and harder I work, the more money that I make. If you’re carrying that mindset, then you’re naturally going to work longer and harder to try and make more money. And you won’t delegate, you won’t build structure, you won’t build team, you won’t relinquish control because your mindset’s keeping you trapped in that position. And that’s where the addiction comes in. So it’s your mindset which is fueling the addiction to work longer because that’s what you believe is how you make money. We’ve got to break that. It’s why it’s a mindset matters episode. You’ve got to open your mind to give yourself permission and see the possibilities that there is a better way.
(11:45):
And if you start to see that and start to make change, then that’s when you get to build the business and life you’ve always dreamed of and freedom can become a reality, but you’ve got to first make that choice to make a change to be able to go on that path.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah. And this is why we talk in terms of stories, because we’re trying to show you what’s possible. Rather than just lecture you about different things in business or through coaching, we try and tell these stories and share them in a way that shows you what’s possible when clients have gone through this journey and given themselves permission. And for this episode, probably a great time to ask. Give us a story of that. I can think of countless clients that have done this exact same thing. And it’s not one in the past. It’s probably just recent ones that are going on now. There’s probably a dozen of them doing this right now.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The one that comes to mind at the moment is he’s Craig the arborist and he’s been in business a fair amount of time. And by all means, he runs quite a successful business. He runs a cracking business and he’s doing multiple seven figures, yet he works, he’s ring out still unnecessarily and he’s wearing all the hats. He’s the bottleneck. He’s got no structure around him and he’s caught in this pattern of behaviour. And I think the thing with behaviour is the longer that this behaviour goes on, the harder it is to break because it becomes a real pattern of operating. But for Craig, he’s like, “We’re not growing. We’ve plateaued. The business is stalled. I’m still working crazy hours. Something’s got to change.” And that’s the position Craig came to coaching. And it was almost like he was addicted to it. He was addicted to that mode of operating and running his business.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah. And then everything doesn’t matter. It just feels like as long as the addiction’s being maintained, it does feel like status quo, but you don’t really care. As long as it is, it’s not the end of the world, we’ll just keep ploughing on. It’s not until you reach that threshold that you get there. And then you start to talk about, “Well, how do I break that addiction?” And for us, there’s a method to it. It depends what strikes the person and how that addiction shows up in terms of some of the things we just explored. But we’ve got ways and things that we sort of hone in on in order to be able to start that process to break the addiction.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
For Craig, the first part was it’s like it’s challenging his relationship with time. He had that mindset of the longer and harder I work, the more money I make. No one’s as good as me. It saves me time and energy and money if I do it myself. So he was caught in that mindset trap around time, but he had a negative adversarial relationship with time. He was trying to manage time. But when we started to unpack his weeks, he was doing so many hours of low value tasks. He still had that mindset where he’s got to be the first one there in the morning. So he would be there, unlock the yard, let all these guys in, and then he’d be running around his team all day long, and then he would be the last one to close up. He’d be on there on Saturday morning, being the mechanic, fixing the trucks and fixing all the gear.
(14:53):
It’s like, “Mate, what are you doing? Do you realise that your mindset’s against you? Let’s shift your relationship with time. Let’s prioritise things better. Let’s make better decisions around your time that you got and let’s start changing up your hours and actually start being a manager of this arborist business rather than thinking you’re an arborist who happens to run a multi-seven figure business.” It’s a slight distinction, but it’s a huge difference. And once we change that, it unlocked a whole different way of thinking for him.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, absolutely. And it will. And it’ll do that for you too as you listen to this and you start to just give yourself permission and look at the possibilities. It feels great, but it’ll feel very foreign. The second one, another subtle shift that we love to do with clients, but it has a massive impact. And I know Craig worked on this too, but we talk about retiring the hives. At some point, retire the hi vis.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. We teach this in our mate to manage a framework in coaching where it’s like there’s got to be a point in time where you shift from being one of the boys to leading the boys and managing the team. And as you’re transitioning off the tools or off the tools, you’ve probably still got your work truck, you probably still got gear in the back, you’ve got all your tools still, and you’re wearing hi vis. And the reality is you’re stuck. You still got your steel cab boots and you’re stuck in that mindset that you are a tradie, you are an arborist that runs a arborist business and that’s your identity. And we had a call recently and I really challenged Craig. I nailed him down on the call. I’m like, “Mate, you run a very successful business. You run a great business. You’re off the tools.
(16:37):
Mate, next week I don’t want to see you in high vis on our group call again.” And you got gear in your truck, get it out. I don’t want to see it. You’re off the tools, you don’t need it. And fair enough, the week later, he had polo shirts, the professional ones, nice slacks on, good boots. That subtle change shifted his mindset overnight and it was huge. It was big for him and got the gear out of the truck, changed his outfit and mindset changed immediately. He became a manager. He thought and dressed like a manager rather than one of the boys on site.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, I love that one. It’s so good. As a side story for this, one of the other ones I always think about this in terms of retiring hi vis is Ben the Sparky. And if you look in his office, his guys, when he did this exercise a long time ago, guys all signed his hi vis and they framed it and gave it to him. So it now hangs up on his wall as a reminder, he’s retired the hives. And I love that as a sort of a marker in time to be able to go, “I’ve given myself permission to change not just what I do in the business, but who I am in the business and how I feel about it. ” It’s huge.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
And I know Craig’s got a bit older kids, but for those of you who might have young kids, it’s like, if you’re off the tools, retire the hi vis. If you’re off the tools, get the tools out of your truck. And maybe one morning a week, drop the kids off to school or one afternoon in the week, go and pick them up. Give yourself permission to go and do that or just go, “You know what? On Tuesday nights, I’m not going to work in the office.” And really challenge yourself to do that because what you’re doing is you’re really being intentional around giving yourself permission to break these patterns of behaviour that you’ve just become accustomed to. And for Craig, he just knew no different. And it wasn’t until then that he started building structure and beefing out bookkeeping and beefing up his admin, and now he’s looking at a really good project manager.
(18:37):
His relationship with time is really changing because of the structure he’s building. But all these little subtle things around structure and team and his relationship with time and all these things we’ve been talking around, he’s changing rapidly now. And it’s really awesome to see, but that’s because he’s giving himself permission to break some of the cycles that he’s been holding onto.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. The next one, we’ve got one more to go, right? And this one, this is such a wide open one. And for me personally, this back in the day was one of the hardest things to come up with. And that is pick a hobby, get a hobby, do something different. And that the permission to do that is, it’s almost frightening in a way. It’s like, I’m going to get out of this little box I’ve been living in. I’m going to pick a hobby. And even just the process of trying to pick what would I like to do is breaking the addiction straight away, let alone actually going and starting to invest your time and develop a passion for that hobby in itself.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah. It’s funny you say this because I know I’ve been guilty of this and I talk about it a lot, but I’m doing Kakoda for those of you who don’t know. And I started training 12 months ago and I was that guy who was still, I’d slip into the office on a Sunday afternoon or I’d slip into the office at nighttime because I’m like, “I don’t want to watch shit on TV. I’d rather go and do something meaningful with my life and continue to build stuff.” But once I committed to my training for Kakoda, it’s amazing that my things that I was doing at nighttime stopped because all of a sudden in the past I’d use the excuse going, “Well, I don’t have time to train.” But once I committed to the challenge, I’d go and walk for an hour at nighttime and I listened to an audiobook or listen to a podcast and do all those types of things.
(20:27):
And so my priorities shifted, but as my priorities shifted, it forced me to be more efficient with the things that mattered during the day. And so by getting hobbies, it actually forces you to do things outside of the business rather than just working all the time. And that’s what I’ve noticed with Kakota training. I train at night. So I do stuff on Saturdays and on Sundays. I train, but it’s forced me to be more intentional and more productive in the time that I’ve got. And that’s the power of a hobby, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, it is. It gives you an outlet. It gives you a sense of focus. It gives you something that you enjoy, presumably, that you enjoy, that contrast with, it gives you an option, I could do this or this. It lets you practise that equation you said. It’s not all one way. It’s practising that awe type of equation in your own life with things that you like to do. So I love it. And as I said, good luck picking your hobby. It’s harder than it sounds, at least it was for me going through this process. But I do love the power of it.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
For you, it’s high rocks. That’s your hobby. That’s what you love. That’s your outlet. For other guys, it might be going on camping trips. It might be going fishing once a month. It might be getting back into golf. Now, don’t take the piss and play golf every Wednesday for a whole day at the expense of not running your business, but it’s picking up things that you love to do. And I think it’s important as business owners, we have that outlet because the reality is running a business can be all consuming. And if you don’t have an area to blow off a bit of steam and have that outlet and enjoy something outside of the business, business can chew you up and spit you out pretty quickly. So I think that’s why hobby’s important. It kind of forces you to balance things out in a way.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah. We also talk about it for the energy side of things and recharging your batteries. Amazing how much more energy you can bring into your work when you have got a hobby and you’ve got something else that’s sustaining and you’re filling up your cup, as we like to call it. If you’ve got that, it just benefits you in so many ways. It’s such a healthier relationship with … It helps you have a healthy relationship with time. It helps you have a healthy relationship with work and what you’re putting into it. So I think the benefits of that hobby one are huge and shouldn’t be understated. All right, let’s go for a challenge, hey? This is going to be pretty obvious. So out of what we’ve just discussed, these three strategies, we’ve talked about changing your hours, retiring your hi vis or picking a hobby. We want you to pick one of those three strategies and commit to it for the next week.
(23:03):
Whether it’s a change your hours, retire the uniform or start a hobby, just pick one and start small with it. And it’s going to feel uncomfortable, but that’s the whole point. What we’re trying to do is break a pattern that’s been running your life for years. So whenever we do something like that, it’s going to feel uncomfortable, but that discomfort’s the price of the change. That’s the price of breaking the addiction. So really what we’re saying is give yourself that gift of permission, explore what’s possible and make a choice. And when you start that ball rolling, just like we saw and through the stories we’ve told today, the knock-on effects, you won’t even be able to see them coming, but they’re absolutely enormous.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Should we have started this episode saying, “Hi, my name’s Rob and I’m addicted to work.”
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I think so. I could do that. Maybe we’ll start that next week. We’ll have Work Addicts Anonymous as another podcast, new podcast from next week.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Love it. What a great episode. Now, if you’re ready to break free from working addiction and build a business that doesn’t consume your whole identity, your whole life, your whole who you are as a person, then book a free discovery call at strategysession.com.au. Let’s work out how we can shift you from being stuck on the tools and being consumed by a business to actually leading one that helps you build a business and life that you actually desire. Now, at the end of the day, success isn’t about how hard you can work. It’s about building something that’s scalable, that’s sustainable, that gives you the time and the money and the freedom and the life that you’ve been searching for. And that can’t happen when you’re addicted to this business. It’s about enjoying your business and it’s about enjoying the fruits of your labour from your business at the same time.
(24:50):
Thanks for tuning in today and looking forward to coming back to you soon with another episode here on The Trade Den. Until then, take care.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Catch you on the next one.