Episode 119 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

You’ve got to have the spine and the backbone to be able to push back on some people not to say no, you’re just saying no, not right now, and give them the option to be able to choose a time that suits them better. 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 (00:25):

Very good. Thank you, Rob. Yeah, great to be back. Doing very well and looking forward to today talking around tools of the trade. I’m going to give a couple of gut checks to set the scene in a moment. I’ve got to get this out because this is a strange one for me and it’s strange to see how clients relate to this topic when we introduce it. It’s usually a hard one for people to wrap their heads around and it’s a hard one for them to implement. It’s like we’re speaking another language when we start talking tools of the trade being a calendar, but really it’s not that different.

Speaker 1 (00:56):

No, it’s not that different at all because when you’re a tradie, what did you live and breathe by? You live and breathe by the scope of the job, the plans that you followed, the schedule that you worked towards every single day, whether you were on a project and you know you were being programmed onto that job to be here for this day and there tomorrow and there the day after, or you’re a maintenance tradie where you ran six or eight jobs in any given day and multiple days throughout the week. So this whole concept of this new tools of your trade, it’s not new. It’s a new tool for when you’re in the office where you might feel a little bit of a fish out of the water, but as a tradesman, you lived and breathed by your schedule. So as a businessman, why don’t you live and breathe by your calendar?

Speaker 2 (01:50):

It’s as simple as that. It really is. It’s just a transition of the skillset you’ve already lived for years with. So with that in mind, and we get into what we’re going to talk about is some principles for day, but let’s do a quick gut check and how many of these sort of sound like you? If you’ve said it, this is going to be really helpful this episode. But first of all, the week’s full. It’s been flat chat, but you’ve got nothing to show for it. That’s the first real gut check you can have. The second one is you’re reactive all day. It’s whenever the phone beeps on not the phone again, you pick it up and you answer. It’s the text. It’s the knock on the door. Hey, have you got five minutes? It’s all of that. None of it’s planned. It’s all reactive.

(02:30):

It’s all in the moment. It’s all ad hoc. The next one is important work just never seems to get done. It’s always, “Oh, I’ll have to get to that next week. Oh, I didn’t get to that this week. I’ll keep it on the list.” And it’s the week after and the week after and you just got this never ending, we’ll just push it forward. Couple more to go. The calendar’s either empty or just a list of just bits and pieces and fragments. It makes no sense. There’s no guidance in it. It’s either neglected and it’s got tumbleweeds basically going across it. We see that all the time. The last one is that you block time for something that really matters and no sooner is it, that was so important for me this week. Hey, have you got five minutes I need to do it then?

(03:08):

Yep, sure. I’ll push you out to the side and it gets dropped. You drop things way too quickly. So I’d say, I don’t know about you, Rob, but maybe if two or more of those are you, this is going to be really powerful to start to understand the principles of calendar management.

Speaker 1 (03:21):

It is. Yeah, there are two or more for sure because if that was your gut check moment and you’re like, “Oh, that’s me, ” then you are burning hours, you’re burning time, you’re unproductive in the time that you got. And no wonder you’re working nights, no wonder you’re working weekends, no wonder 60 to 80 hours a week of the norm for you. It’s just because you’re not managing yourself properly in the time that you got and using your diary as your schedule to be able to keep you productive.

Speaker 2 (03:50):

Yeah. And this is what it is. It’s not necessarily, we talk about this and we teach our emerging managers this sort of stuff, but it’s not necessarily just scheduling and that’s it. It’s a prioritisation tool that you’ve got. It’s a direct reflection of your decisions about what’s important, how you treat things, what’s in it, what’s not in it. The whole story of how business runs is you can almost pick it up from someone’s calendar how they operate.

Speaker 1 (04:16):

You can. When it comes to health and wellbeing, it’s like show me what someone puts in their mouth and I’ll show you what their health looks like. It’s like, show me what’s on someone’s calendar and I’ll tell you how they go running their business. It’s an absolute direct correlation to your personal self-organisation and self-management ability shows front and centre on the way that you manage yourself through your calendar.

Speaker 2 (04:42):

Yeah, agree 100%. Let’s look at the four universal principles we’re going to cover off today and then we’ll break them down for you. So principle number one is weekly planning, absolutely non-negotiable. Principle number two, having structured time, structured time in your calendar. Principle number three, we call accepting chaos. Rather than trying to resist it and get this perfect world that you’ve designed to work, you’ve got to accept chaos. And principle number four is having built in flexibility. So that’s what we’re going to cover off for the rest of the episode. And let’s kick it off then with principle one, which is weekly planning. Now this is without doubt, whenever I’m coaching someone we do this, it’s always the imperative. It’s a single most important non-negotiable event in anyone’s calendar.

Speaker 1 (05:25):

You wouldn’t start a job by just rocking up to a job site and start digging holes and laying pipe all over the place and trying to fit off a toilet without following the build programme and the schedule to be able to do what you need to get done as a plumber. You just would not do that. There’s a scope, there’s documentation, there’s plans, there’s priorities, and there’s a structure in terms of the way that you schedule and programme and execute against that job. It’s no difference when you’re a leader. You’ve got to be able to plan. You got to be in control of your plan and your week and you do that through the start of your week. Now that is the start of your week, guys. It’s sitting down at the start of the week and going, right, what’s the priorities for me this week?

(06:07):

What’s really important that I’ve got to get done to be able to not just keep the business ticking over, but work on the business to be able to improve it in the end of the day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:16):

And it’s really important. It matters. The ability to set that up, like you said, and get out of reactive mode is this is where it all begins. So that’s why it does matter that you have this planning meeting and why it needs to be at the start of the week.

Speaker 1 (06:29):

Now we did record a whole episode around this around episode number 100 around how 15 minutes on a Monday save you hours within a week. So if you haven’t listened to episode 100 yet, make sure you go back and listen to that episode because there was an absolute belter. It talks a bit about our Monday morning momentum process that we get our clients that weekly ritual on a Monday to be able to round out the prior week and set themselves up for the week ahead. So if you haven’t listened to it, make sure you go back and listen to that episode.

Speaker 2 (07:00):

So yeah, episode 100 is where you can get the full breakdown, all right? So just a real quick summary. 15 minutes, same time every week, get into the rhythm of it and it’s got to be before you get into the guts of your week. Don’t say, “Well, I’m going to make it up and do it on a Wednesday or something like that. ” Do it on a Friday, a Sunday, a Monday morning, whatever it is that works for you. Lock it in as a recurring appointment. It’s in the calendar every single week. It’s non-negotiable. Treat it like a VIP client meeting, on that you might at a real pinch maybe have to push out sometimes just a little bit, but you never skip it. You wouldn’t do it. So don’t do it with this either. It’s that important. So this is really the foundation and the next three principles we’re going to cover off.

(07:38):

They’re not going to happen unless you do this. That’s why we call it non-negotiable. We really can’t emphasise it enough, can we, Rob?

Speaker 1 (07:46):

No, we can’t because if you don’t plan your week, then you can’t set in structured times. You can’t build in cars. You can’t do the things that we’re going to talk about now unless you actually sit down and plan your week ahead with intention around what you’re going to do to be able to move the business forward and build the business and grow and expand it as well.

Speaker 2 (08:06):

So let’s keep going then with that setup and move into principle two, which is structured time. Now, structured time is all around what goes into your calendar once you’ve had your planning session. At the moment we’ve got one planning session, if you’ve got a blank calendar, that’s all that’s in it. Then it’s what comes next. And this is where most trades owners fall into a bit of trap. They treat every task as equal and as long as it fits in. The task is the task. It’s a to-do. It’s just more shit I’ve got to get done. But replying to a supplier text isn’t the same. It doesn’t need the same mental energy as quoting a $200,000 job or something like that. You need to put it in the right space for the task that it is. And we talk about things like energy rhythms.

(08:49):

What part of the day’s good for you with that? When can it work well for you? When can you set up to do your best thinking? When can you give the thoughts to the big quotes and tenders that you’ve got to do and having structured time that you can rely on for that. So I think batching work by work type is really important and understanding what those batches can look like.

Speaker 1 (09:09):

Yeah. I like to use the analogy of again, when you’re a tradesman and say you’re a maintenance plumber, for example, your boss just didn’t say, “Here, here’s 30 jobs. All the best go and go and get them done for the week.” Because I guarantee if that happens, it’d come to Friday afternoon and probably 20 only got done because the customer didn’t know when they were going to get done, materials wouldn’t have been organised and you probably weren’t organised enough to be able to manage your own diary as a tradesman. Yet as a business owner, it’s the same thing when you don’t have your week scheduled out, no wonder why your nights and weekends blow out because you’re not productive, you’re not in a high performance type of mentality and that’s why you’ve got to somewhat time block your week of this concept of time blocking is super important.

(09:57):

So what you’re doing is blocking in time for quoting. You’re blocking in time for invoicing, you’re blocking in time for debtor management, you’re blocking in time to be on the tools if you’re still on the tools. You’re blocking in time for your site meetings. Now you’re already doing this stuff throughout the week, but what you’re doing is deciding when you’re going to do it. You’re being more intentional around when you’re doing it rather than reacting to the demands of the people around you and constantly fighting fires because you’re really just chasing a whim or putting out the biggest thing that screams the loudest. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:36):

You’re just trying to cram it all in somewhere somehow I’ve just got to get it all done and muscle your way through it. I like that. They’re really good examples too. A couple of other ones, things like team meetings or one-on-one meetings with your team. Really important that it’s structured. Business development, sales calls, those big blocks of time that require the attention, make sure you give it the respect it deserves. So let’s move on to principle three, which is accept chaos. Now what we mean by this is that you could have a really nice structured calendar. It can look pretty. It can look like it’s filled. It looks like I’m going to be productive for the week. My planning meeting went really well. I’ve got it all in there and it looks great. But if you don’t leave room for what you still can’t see coming, like how often does the week go that you actually get to do everything at the exact time with no interruptions?

(11:22):

If you’ve got your calendar back to back to back to back and it’s all planned out, it’s rare. It’s almost impossible to think that it’s going to go that way. So if you don’t leave room for those things, if you don’t accept chaos as coming in and you don’t build in some chaos time with no back-to-back meetings, which means a little gap in between meetings and blocks, then you’re just going to set yourself up to be under pressure or you’re going to get to a point where your calendar’s no longer relevant because you’ve got to have those little periods in between.

Speaker 1 (11:50):

Yeah. Especially for those guys of you working capital cities like you know what traffic’s like in the capital cities. It’s out of control and sometimes you’ve got to go from one job to get to the quote and we see it with clients. They don’t even allow enough time to be able to get from that site to that next quote and they know that they’ve got a 45 minute trip, but they back that appointment onto the back of each other and you know what it’s like. Sometimes you get caught on a job site where you get caught trying to solve a problem or talking to a customer or another subtrade.You’ve got to allow that those things are going to pop up during your week. You know it. It happens to you every single day. So stop trying to make your diary perfect. Give yourself that flex time in that, build that chaos time into your week to be able to allow meetings to run over or allow yourself time to travel to the next job.

(12:43):

There’s just nothing worse than turning up to meetings late or missing them all together because you’ve tried to jam in your week too tight.

Speaker 2 (12:50):

Yeah. And if you don’t, what’s going to happen is you start to turn on your own calendar because you’re like, “Well, it doesn’t mean anything. I can’t follow it. It’s all too hard. I blew out today. That unravelled massively. I’ll just ignore everything that was there. You never go back to it. You never look at what it was and it just becomes something that’s an added thing in your week. So that idea of chaos time is just that gap between travel time’s a great example. 15 minutes minimum is what we recommend clients do. 15 to 30 minutes between meetings just to give you that space for what can come out of the blue to give you that sense of, hey, it’s okay if I’m five minutes late. I can still get back to my day. It’s still on track. I’m still productive for my day rather than just going, “Well, that’s out the window, that ran away from me. I’ll try again tomorrow.” We hear that too often and I think that chaos time is just a real hidden gem if you can get it.

Speaker 1 (13:40):

A great example is in, and I know when I’m running group calls, for example, on a Tuesday, we’ve got one from nine till 10 and then we don’t have the next one till 11 o’clock, but that allows me to be able to round out the meeting. And if we go over by five or 10 minutes, then so be it. It then gives me a bit of time to go and have a coffee, go to the toilet. It means I can have a space to check my phone, respond to an email or a message. I can build in that chaos time in the middle. It allows me to turn, get my head out of that programme and get my head into this programme. And then I can turn up early, make sure I’m ready to go and bang, we hit the ground running. Clients start turning up five or 10 minutes before the start time and bang, we’re off by 11 o’clock.

(14:22):

So there’s an example where I could easily just go 9:00 or 10:00, 10:30 till 11:30 and really jam it all in. But I like to build in those little bit of chaos or buffer time in there to be able to just build those shock absorbers in your week. You know that you have these times in your week, you’ve just got to build it into your calendar so it makes it work for you.

Speaker 2 (14:45):

Yeah. Let’s leave principle three and get into our last one.This one’s another one and it’s an important concept that I think is underrated. Principle number four is built in flexibility. So built in flexibility and whenever we do this, we always tell clients, mind the gap. And what we’re talking about is leaving space in your calendars. It’s not about getting your calendar full to say how busy you are. Look at my calendar, it’s absolutely jam packed. This is having unscheduled blocks of time in your calendar. These are bigger than just your chaos gaps or those little shock absorber moments you said before, Rob. This is 30 to 60 minutes might be free in your calendar for the week. And the idea is that’s built in flexibility that allows you a reserve, a parking space if you like, for having that ability to still flex with the week and the demands that do come up for the things that are either more important or things that are absolutely more urgent and important they need to tackle.

Speaker 1 (15:42):

Yeah. I remember one of my first clients was a dentist and we used to strategically built in times into his schedule around dental emergencies because he always knew on a Monday and on a Tuesday he’d need to have dental emergencies from kids playing sports on the weekend or whatever it is. Like that emergency, they were actually labelled emergency slots within the diary. It was building in that flex time. For a trades business, it could be just giving yourself that space to be able to, if a builder rings and says, “Hey mate, I really want to be able to catch up with you on site.” It’s like, “Yeah, let’s do that on Wednesday afternoon. Does that suit you kind of thing? It’s building in these times to be able to catch up on a few quotes you didn’t get to in your quoting block. It could be building in a bit of a time to be able to work on something that you’re doing to work on your business, whether it’s pricing or a recruitment or whatever it is, or just giving yourself space to breathe and think strategically in your week.

(16:40):

It’s just creating that space and time in your days to be able to get things done.

Speaker 2 (16:46):

Yeah. And it allows you, I like that idea of the client. The things that you get to Tuesday, no one knew.You didn’t know what was going to happen on Tuesday or Monday and you now got to make a call. It’s like, “Hey, we need you to come to site for this really important meeting. There’s a lot of either money on the line. There’s something we’ve got to discuss. It does require you. ” People flip out and again, it’s another reason why they give up on their calendar. It’s like, because I don’t know what my clients are going to say. Now you’ve got the ability to go, “I’ve got that really important. That’s when I was going to do my invoicing, but let’s move that. I can actually make that happen. I’ve got to move a couple of things, but you move that into your parking space, you take the meeting.

(17:20):

It allows you to still get done what needs to be done. And when you’re looking at a full calendar, you just ignore it. And usually that’s how things get bumped that we talk about at the start of this episode. You’ll just bump it, ignore it, forget it. It falls through the cracks because you never had space to move it and hold yourself accountable through your calendar.

Speaker 1 (17:37):

Now, there’s a key distinction when it comes to flexibility here is you build in flexible times, but you’ve got to make sure your calendar has an element of rigidity to it where you protect your time blocks. Where guys go wrong is that they then start to get this concept of, okay, I’m going to start time blocking and blocking out my calendar and putting times in there for quoting and site meetings and invoicing and stuff, but they don’t then fiercely protect the hell out of that time because they’re still a bit of a yes man as well and a builder will ring up and say, Hey, Rob, need to be able to see you on site this afternoon at three o’clock. And for example, now in your calendar you’ve got invoicing from 3:00 till 5:00 PM and the rigidity is you say to that builder, “Hey mate, I’ve got an appointment already. I’ve already got a meeting booked in for three o’clock. Unfortunately, I can’t be there this afternoon, but can I see you tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock or tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock? Which one suits you best?” So you’ve got availability in your diary, which is what we’re talking around the flexible nature of it, is you’ve built in those gaps in your diary, but you’ve got to treat the time blocks with respect and fiercely protect the hell out of and almost be a little bit inflexible. Now that builder doesn’t know that your meeting is a invoicing meeting with yourself to get invoicing done, but you’ve got to have the spine and the backbone to be able to push back on some people, not to say no, you’re just saying no, not right now, and give them the option to be able to choose a time that suits them better.

Speaker 2 (19:20):

Yeah, so important. And I think it comes off well. I mean, people that value their time are people that get respected.You’re not going to be met with, “Well, that’s it. You usually will get the flex. It’s amazing how flexible people can be when you give them those options. I can make that work.” So it really does swing both ways. That’s a really good point.

Speaker 1 (19:39):

Yeah. From a psychology point of view, you’re actually letting them feel like they’ve got the win because you’re saying, “Hey, Dan, sorry, mate. I can’t make three o’clock savvy, but I can … What do you think around tomorrow? I can do in the morning, maybe 10 o’clock or maybe in the afternoon around 3:00, what do you reckon?” “Oh yeah, three sounds good. Cool. Awesome. Does that work for you? Yeah, sweet. All right. See you on site tomorrow at three o’clock. “And they’re like, ” Cool. I’ve just locked in a time with them at three o’clock. “So for them, you’re not saying no, you’re just saying no, not right now. And you are then giving without sounding like being a dick about it, but you’re giving them times that suit you and they’re choosing and they feel like they’ve made the decision to be able to call that meeting. So that’s just psychologically how you get around it.

Speaker 2 (20:19):

Really good, really good. The last little piece on this as well that’s worth saying is this isn’t free time. This isn’t empty time. This isn’t, I’m going to book in golf for that time and I’ll just be out of the office.This is work time. These moments need to be used for being productive not just to build absolute breaks. If you want to use that and put that in as a golf time, put in golf in your calendar. Don’t kid yourself that I’ve got free time. I can do whatever I want.

Speaker 1 (20:45):

I remember that time I was talking to business owner and I’m like, ” How’s business going? “”Oh yeah, not too bad, Rob.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, what’s happening?” And then we got onto hobbies and stuff and he’s like, “Oh yeah, play golf every Wednesday.” I’m like, “Okay.” And then I asked him questions about how’s his business going oh mate, we’re struggling. We’re not winning work. I’m like, “Maybe you need to give up golf on your Wednesday in the short term so you can actually spend time winning new work and quoting and getting quotes out the door and learning more work. Maybe it’s a disconnect.”

Speaker 2 (21:15):

That’s right. That flex time’s not golf time.

Speaker 1 (21:18):

That’s taking the piss time.

Speaker 2 (21:19):

Yeah, exactly. That’s in the bucket of when we talk about lifestyle businesses. Really cool. So those are our principles and I think you get to protect yourself by having those gaps like we said. You don’t just bump things, you actually reschedule. You’ve got margin for moving. It’s not 100% capacity redlining the whole week and you get to actually still have that ability to knock stuff off that’s on that to-do list that you’ve got off to the side. You can get that stuff done. So there’s a real productive element to it and having it in there. All right, challenge time. We ready?

Speaker 1 (21:54):

Let’s do it.

Speaker 2 (21:55):

Alright, two parts to this. The first thing is I want you to open up your calendar right now and have a look at Monday morning and I want to see what’s there. I want you to really look at that first couple of hours on a Monday and pay attention to it because I guarantee how that Monday starts is how your week’s probably going to go. So really have a think about, well, what does my calendar say about me and how I’m setting up my week when I look at it before we do what’s coming next. Okay. Really important. The next thing is book in your weekly planning session, that first principle we had the non-negotiable. Book it in. Not for some time, not just, “Yeah, I can probably squeeze it in. It’s probably a good idea, Rob. That sounds great. Do it right now. Get off this episode, get your calendar out, put it in there.

(22:41):

And it could be that it’s a Monday. It could be that it’s your Sunday afternoon. It could be that it’s your Friday night, but before you kick into your week next week, have that booked in and show up for it. That’s really the most important thing. Now, in terms of how long, give yourself 45 minutes. All right It might be a stretch for some people, but give yourself that time and just put it in your calendar and see how it feels. If it goes shorter, great. If you can get really stuck into it, great. And over time it will swing and shift. You’ll find what your rhythm is. And if you listen to episode a hundred, you’ll get down to that sort of the goal is that 15 sort of minutes, but give yourself the gift of at least experiencing what it’s like to have a planned week where you’ve got your structure in place because it really is a game changer and it starts to really move the needle in terms of how you show up and how productive you are.

(23:31):

And that’s how your calendar becomes one of those tools that serves you as opposed to being a thing that you end up either being a slave to or what you just throw out the window and ignore after a week.

Speaker 1 (23:40):

What a great episode, Dan. I’ve absolutely loved it. And there’s a saying in entrepreneurship that says that the money follows your calendar. And so hopefully this episode’s opened your eyes to be able to realise where either your money is or is not going right now, which is probably a true reflection based on how your calendar is currently structured. It’s a very simple concept, but there’s a lot of power in terms of optimising your self-organisation and self-management to ensure that you as a leader are operating at the highest level that you can be. Now, if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and you know that your self-organisation and self-management skills needs a lot of work to be able to develop yourself as a manager and leader in your business, jump across to strategysession.com.au, fill out the application form and book in a time that suits you for a discovery call. Let’s talk a bit about where you’re at, where you’re trying to go and how we can help you develop your soft management skills to be able to take your business and life to the next level. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode and looking forward to coming back to you with another episode on The Trade Den very shortly. Until then, take care.

Speaker 2 (24:46):

See you soon.