Episode 47 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

You’re coming into January to hit the ground running and fill your pipeline, but you’re setting your year up for a really strong pipeline in front of you so you can continue on the trajectory that you finished in the prior year. Hi everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den.

Speaker 2 (00:24):

Hey there, how you going?

Speaker 1 (00:26):

The way you start the year sets the tone for the year after a bit of a break. Isn’t it amazing how refreshed and recharged you feel your head is in the clouds rather than in the weeds? More optimistic, more strategic, playing a long game and focusing on what is important, not urgent. It is no wonder that you’re feeling more motivated to get back into business and make this year your best year. Yet the trouble is the festive period has taken you out of routine and put you into holiday mode. Wouldn’t it be great to achieve balance to keep your head in the clouds and your feet firmly on the ground regularly throughout the year? Developing the ability to flick the switch and get back into gear is critical to setting yourself up for success. Otherwise, January is gone and before you know it, you’re back into tactical, short-term thinking and firefighting. Let’s look at the top three things you can do this week to hit the ground running with your head in the clouds and your feet in the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:23):

So when I think about hitting the ground running, I think Rob, about the way we do it at Pravar, we’ve done it enough and I think it’s unique in the way that we do it. Outsiders might see it as being hectic or draining, but in fact it’s really, really well planned and I actually find it quite energising and I think that’s sort of the aim for this, right? For me, when I think about it, there’s two parts to it and there’s probably two within each, which is one is there’s vision and direction that’s always applied. We come back, we know exactly where we’re going and what we’re doing. The long-term is definitely there. There’s an outcome that we’ve set and we know what that looks like. I think the other thing then though is there’s another application on execution and progress. There’s got to be some execution. We want that quick win. There’s got to be some movement made. We’ve got to get out of the station. So I think for me, our start of the year is, like I said to other people, it would be exhausting. It would be jarring. But for us, I think we always come back, especially you and I and we’ve got so much on, but we’re so excited by it and we actually come out the end of that first couple of weeks really energised about what lies ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:31):

Yeah, traditional thought is to do financial years in business because that’s notoriously when a lot of the big corporations do. Their planning is financial years, but we do calendar years and I think that’s because you’ve traditionally had a break. The whole industry is somewhat closed down. You come back refreshed, recharged, you have your best thinking, your best version of yourself to be able to go, well, where do I want to go this year? And that’s why we do do that calendar year, but you’re also right that you’ve got to hit the ground running early on in this process when you get back into business. Otherwise before you know it, January is just gone like that, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (03:15):

And it becomes, well when I get around to it and everything starts to get pushed out and like we say, you just end up kicking the can down the road for so many things and basically nothing gets done and there is no progress.

Speaker 1 (03:30):

To be able to give some context around this, I’ve got a story around one of our awesome clients, Ahmad, you would’ve actually heard his story on a previous episode from the trade in podcast and Ahmad’s been a client of Pravar for a number of years now, and the more he’s done goal setting, visioneering setting, strategic roadmaps, the better he’s got at it. And Ahmad did a cracking job in 2023, really set himself up for a big year ahead. He came back, hit the ground running, got his team on board. Everyone was just on point on fire and bang, he had a cracker of a year. The problem was is in 2024 he is like, I’ve done this a number of years now. I don’t necessarily, I’ve done this, I’ve been there before. I’m going to go and book myself a big holiday, which was really important to him with his family. He went away for five weeks and he had a cracking time caravan with his family around Tassie and they did. They had an amazing time, but what happened was that was at the expense of the start of his year in 2024. He wasn’t on point. His team didn’t hit the ground running, they were back into tactical firefighting. There was no direction, no clarity, and if you ask him, he self confessed that it took him the first couple of months of the year to actually get his feet on the ground and get grooved. And yes, he had an amazing time, but it came at a cost and there’s a great example of one business owner, two ends of the spectrum and the results that they got in the year was determined by the way that they started the year.

Speaker 2 (05:19):

And I think Ahmad didn’t realise how much impact it did have and not just how much impact it it had, but how far reaching that was. It was almost every part of his business when he came back. I remember it because we were looking at reviews and numbers weren’t where they needed to be. The issues he had with staff was something that was unusual. Almost every function of business suffered because of this shift he made between 2023 and 2024. And I think it’s worthwhile, Rob, if we camp out just for a minute on the difference between the two to contrast showing up and hitting the ground running in 2023, I think there’s some real key things that Ahmad received or he did or he generated as a result of that.

Speaker 1 (05:59):

Yeah, absolutely. In 2023, he came back with clarity, inspiration, high levels of execution, a roadmap, just strategic execution. He just absolutely hit the ground running. And how do you compare that to 2024, do you think?

Speaker 2 (06:14):

Well, I think 2024 was different. He came back and it was manic. It was almost like he was trying to sprint to catch up with the year and it took him a long, long time and a lot of energy to do that. He was really behind the eight ball. The pipeline as you said was suffering. Everything was sort of haemorrhaging. It just wasn’t healthy and he had an unproductive team spot fires everywhere. So I think it was a really, we’ll never forget that story and I’m sure we’re going to tell it almost every year when we get to our start of year with clients because it’s such a good reminder of the choice you’ve got whether you hit the ground running or not.

Speaker 1 (06:50):

I think one point that we do want to make this and put a caveat around this is that what we’re not saying is you shouldn’t have a break over Christmas. We’re not saying that at all. What we are saying is that as a leader, we encourage you to schedule in absolutely schedule in regular breaks throughout the year to ensure that you are on point in January rather than just doing what most business owners do in the industry, which is shut down for long periods of time over Christmas, have no breaks throughout the year, and they use Christmas as the only time that they do break and they miss the opportunity to get the jump on their competition come the start of the year. And if you get this wrong, part of December is destroyed because of Christmas and you somewhat destroy half or if not more of January because you just haven’t hit the ground running.

(07:47):

So instead of having a whole 12 month year, it’s 11 months at best and you wonder why you have cashflow problems and profitability issues and you’re not achieving as good as you can, as great as you can in your business is because you pretty much wipe out a whole month. So I want to say that we’re not saying don’t have a break at Christmas. That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is have breaks throughout the year, schedule them in be well-planned and well considered around the Christmas break and you’ve got to get back straight into things in January and hit the ground running. Otherwise you just erode pretty much all of January if you get it wrong.

Speaker 2 (08:26):

Yeah, I think you summed it up when you did it in the intro. You talked about having your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground and I think that’s what you’re alluding to buck, but these breaks throughout the year allow you to reset and it’s not just the start of the year where you’re doing this, but having your head in the clouds means having that vision. Like you said, Ahmad’s 2023, he absolutely had his head in the clouds and his feet firmly on the ground. I think you miss either one of those when you come back, you do catch up and I think it equally applies having those breaks through the year as you are sort of saying, allows you to reset and put your head back up into the clouds or prepare to have your feet back on the ground. It just depends how often you need to do that or how well you can plan for it.

Speaker 1 (09:06):

Yeah, so what we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you three strategies to ensure that you absolutely get your feet firmly on the ground and set yourself up for a big year ahead and crack on with things as soon as you can in the new year.

Speaker 2 (09:21):

Yeah, I think the first one, and we’re trying to make this simple today, this is simple having gone through so many different ways of trying it and coaching guys through it, but these three are really critical and I think you miss any of these. It is really going to hurt. But the first one that we talk about is kickstarting your team.

Speaker 1 (09:38):

Yeah, this one’s really important because what you’ve got to do is you set the tone and lead the charge. It’s so important. You’ve got to remember that you’ve been on break, your team have been on break. Human beings just like you are and they’re out of rhythm. You’ve been out of rhythm. You’ve got to be able to get in there, set the tone, lead the charge, and boom, we’re back in, we’re back on with business, let’s crack on with things.

Speaker 2 (10:03):

Yeah, absolutely. I like to think of it, the ship doesn’t sail without the captain. I mean everyone will show up, everyone will be on board, everyone will be back at work when you tell them to, but whether or not you start to make progress is going to come down to you as a leader. And if you shirk that or you think that you can skirt by or you can be a little bit off guaranteed if there’s one time of the year where everyone’s going to follow that lead and happily do so for as long as they can. It’s the start of the year. And that is because people love holiday mode. Who doesn’t? I do. You do. But when it’s time to go, it’s time to cut away from the dock and get the year underway. You’ve got to show up.

Speaker 1 (10:39):

Yeah. I think it’s still important to be able to get in there and have the conversations and check in with how everyone’s Christmas and new and do all those types of things, but very, very early, as soon as you get back, meet with your operational team. If you’ve got one, sit down with your office crew, your admin, your bookkeeper, and chat to them and set the tone for getting stuck back into things. And then the next thing you can do is call a toolbox talk, get everyone’s head back in the game and bang, let’s crack on with things. And you’ve got to bring everyone into alignment and crack on with things because if you’re not careful, this is where unproductive time happens, mistakes happen, people’s heads aren’t in the game, so safety issues can occur. So you’ve really got to be able to come in, flick a switch in on the minds of your team, get their heads in the game and let’s go. Let’s march on. Everyone’s full of energy after a bit of a breather, let’s get on with it and have a really, really strong start to the year. And that starts with you as the leader setting the tone for how you’re going to start the year for a good sustainable, profitable year.

Speaker 2 (11:52):

Yeah, I think if we were to expand on that, if we were to put down sort of, well, when you have those meetings, I know a lot of guys say we’re going to have the meeting and they all sit around and they don’t really know where to go. But if you talked about it and you said, well, three things I think and I’ll be interested to get your thoughts on this, is where are we going? What is that, that future vision, what’s that exciting vision? Where are we leading ourselves to? Where are we at right now? So a bit of a face the facts and let’s just take stock and then really what’s the first steps we’re going to absolutely commit to doing in the next, I don’t know how you feel, but I’d say in the next week or by the end of Jan, where do we want to land? I think you do that well really well with our team. We all know where we need to be landing come end of January.

Speaker 1 (12:31):

Yeah, absolutely. If you get those three things right in your team meetings, then it just allows everyone just to get in, get on with it and start getting the job done to be able to start the year on a really positive note, get everyone aligned and you just crack on with it and everyone knows where they need to be and let’s just get moving again.

Speaker 2 (12:48):

Yeah, absolutely. Alright next, and I’m not sure if it’s in order or not, but I think once you’ve got the team locked away, you’ve then got to spend some time with yourself and lock in your schedule.

Speaker 1 (12:59):

If you’ve listened to the episodes to the back end of last year, we spoke a lot around setting yourself up for success and not only finishing strong but starting strong. And part of that is pre-selling into January and getting organised. Now you’re in January, things are going to change. You’re going to have movements in your pipeline, there’s going to be jobs being pushed out, jobs, jobs not ready to go, whatever it is. So getting into Christmas, you’ve had your best crack at filling your first couple of weeks, now you’re in the first couple of weeks. You’ve got to really dial it in, lock in that schedule and get cracking.

Speaker 2 (13:38):

And I think what you’re sort of saying there is getting the ground crew productive as soon as possible. And when we talk about that, it’s not just so that they’re busy, we don’t usually like that word, but it’s not so that they’re busy. There’s a real important thing that comes as a result of getting the ground crew productive.

Speaker 1 (13:55):

Yeah, it’s getting billable time done straight away because you’ve got to remember that if they’re just meandering around being, they’re there, you’re paying them and if they’re not on billable time, you are eroding margin on jobs or you’re eroding your bottom line, paying for wages and work’s not getting billed. So you’ve already come off the back of a couple of weeks over Christmas, new Year’s period where you’ve had a hard shut or a skeleton crew and if you are just meandering into the start of the year and guys are waning around and not really doing too much because you haven’t dialled in your schedule, you can go from two weeks shut to three or more because haven’t got, and you’ve guys standing around doing not a lot. So you’ve got to get in the schedule tight, get ’em productive, get ’em billable voices out the door so you can get money back in so you can really crack on with the year.

Speaker 2 (14:47):

Yeah, I’ll share a little bit as coaches and as a coaching, we do a lot of projections with our guys in the lifestyle programme and part of projecting out month by month revenue and forecasting we know out of experience and what we tell guys to do, and it’s not in every example, but across the board, I’d say the average that we do in December or January, depending which ones you’re quite, which ones you’re busy, but we’ll discount the revenue you think you’re going to get on an average over the year by down to about 30% of what it is normally in January. And if guys don’t do this scheduling correctly, you think I’m already going to be down on billable anyway, but if I haven’t got my scheduling right, it doesn’t take long before you’re going backwards at a rate of knots over that four week period. You wouldn’t think it, but it is absolutely critical that you get that lifeblood, that cash back in the business and your cashflow cycles working.

Speaker 1 (15:35):

Yeah, absolutely. And so it’s getting get your team set, dial in that schedule and crack on with it. Let’s get moving.

Speaker 2 (15:44):

Yeah, for sure. Alright, last one that we talk about then is igniting the pipeline.

Speaker 1 (15:50):

Yeah, this is a big one and there’s no better way than obviously before Christmas you were using Christmas as your excuse to do either account management or business development to be able to go, Hey, Christmas coming up, how’s it going? What have you got? Employ? You are using that as a reason to have a conversation. Now you are using January as a valid business reason to be able to get in there and have the conversation. You’re ringing them and how’s your Christmas? How’s your New Year’s? What are you up to? Where are you going? And you are using the new year to kickstart your pipeline and using the festive period as a valid business reason to make contact and get in there and start on a positive note by getting straight into sales and straight into business development regardless if you’ve got a full pipeline or not, you’ve got to get in there and hit the ground running.

Speaker 2 (16:45):

And I think that same little mini structure we talked about, you can use this in that call if you’re not comfortable going into those things again, what am I going to talk about? We’ve only just got back, it’s a couple of days in. Don’t talk like that. Really knuckle down and use the same thing we just said for your team, ask the customers, where are you going this year? Share your plans. We’re really interested to see it. We’re keen to work with you. Where are you at right now? Is there anything you need? And what’s the first steps look like? I know we spoke last year about what was coming up, but those jobs, are they on track? What are our first steps and when can we expect that they’re going to kick off? Is everything still going as planned? I think that sort of conversation, a really proactive high energy, we’re here to serve you and lock away this stuff is really, really important.

Speaker 1 (17:28):

Yeah, absolutely. And obviously you’re not going to be able to ring all your customers in the first week, but you definitely want to be able to get in there and over the first couple of weeks of January and your key customers, whether you work for builders, strata managers, building managers, developers, insurance companies, whoever. Obviously if Mrs. Jones, your customer, you’re not going to ring her and go, what have you got in store this year? But especially if you’re in the B2B game, you want to be able to get in there and make contact with key customers and there should be no reason why the end of January you’re in, you’ve made contact because you’ve got to remember, like we’ve spoken around in previous episodes around sales when we did the pipeline series, you’ve got to understand your gestation period. And what we mean by that is the work you’re doing today is not trying to make a sale in January and February. What you’re doing is you’re coming into January to hit the ground running and fill your pipeline for April, May, June, quarter and beyond. And so even though you’re coming back into the new year, you get in, get your team set, get the schedule set, bang straight into business development not to sell now, but you’re setting your year up for a really strong pipeline in front of you so you can continue on the trajectory that you finished in the prior year.

Speaker 2 (18:50):

Yeah, I love that. And we see these guys rest on their laurels. They’ll smash it out of the park in the lead up and they’re like, I’m full January’s awesome, we’re looking great even into Feb, we’re looking good. And then they do bugger all for that first six, eight weeks of the year and they’re back to where they started. They might as well have not done it because now March, April is going to be an absolute nightmare.

Speaker 1 (19:10):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (19:12):

Really good. I think with igniting the pipeline, the overarching theme or the punchline of it all, Rob, is really just how can we help getting in front of customers asking that question and understanding where you can add value is really critical.

Speaker 1 (19:25):

What I love about the three strategies that we’ve spoken around today, come the first one to two weeks of the year, your team set your schedule set, you’re starting on a positive note in sales already. Bang, what a positive start to the year you’re in. You’re getting on with it. You’re not meandering back your head’s back in holiday mode where you’ve been out of routine, sleeping in, going to the beach, all those types of things you’re in, you’re on with it. Boom, business starts and you’re cracking on with the year. If you get this wrong, it kills the start of the year. If you get it right, it sets you up for a really great year ahead. And that’s why I love about these three simple strategies you get in, you get on with it and you just get the year started on a really positive note. And that’s why we really make this a strong emphasis in coaching across the board with all our clients.

Speaker 2 (20:24):

And if you’re in a competitive industry, this puts guys months ahead. It gives you almost like an extra month on the competition if you really think about it.

Speaker 1 (20:32):

Yeah, absolutely. If you are stuck in the weeds but determined to make 2025 your best year yet booking a strategy call and let’s work together to be able to map out the year that’s in front of you, and let’s make this your best year yet, let’s get really clear on where you ended up at the end of last year. Let’s get really clear on where you want to go over the next 12 months. Let’s future pace you for the 12 months ahead. Let’s get really clear on the outcome. Let’s set the roadmap. The strategic plays will drop out of that. The clarity you’re going to get is enormous and let’s work through that together. It takes us about 60 to 90 minutes, but let’s get in with it and it’ll be the best 60 to 90 minutes that you can invest to be able to set you up to get real clarity and where you want to go. So jump across to strategysession.com au, all the links in the show notes and let’s get that call booked in. We primarily work with trades and construction business owners doing over a million dollars a year who really want to be able to build their business and live an amazing family life. If that’s you, get the call booked in and let’s see if we can do some amazing work together this year.

Speaker 2 (21:43):

Yeah, we’d love to see you on those calls. Well, Rob, I think it is time to get your head in the game and it is time to set yourself up for your best year yet. So let’s just round this one out by just summarising again those three points that we have talked about today.

Speaker 1 (21:57):

Yeah, number one is lock in your team meetings. Number two is optimise your schedule, and number three is unlock opportunities by booking in meetings with key customers.

Speaker 2 (22:10):

Simple as that. Get on with it.

Speaker 1 (22:12):

Let’s do it. Thanks for tuning in today. Let’s get rubber meeting the road now. And like we say here at Pravar Group, let’s make shit happen. So get in there, execute on those three strategies and set yourself up for a belter of a year ahead. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2 (22:30):

See you soon.