Episode 92 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

By growing your business. It’s not about just taking more and more and more and more and more on. You’ve got to stop, create capacity, create the space to work on the things that matter, which are going to take your business and life to the next level. Hi 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 (00:24):

Great, Rob. Good to be back. Hello, everyone. Excited for today. It’s been a while since we’ve done this a Time Matters episode, so really important to keep coming back to these and a really big one today. It’s, I’d say it’s a huge little framework. The implications of it are huge. The simplicity of it though, I just love. So the time reclaim framework, stop, start, continue. And it’s important, and this is something that probably you might’ve heard of before, but most business owners attack their time problems backwards. They look at a schedule and think, well, what else should I be doing? And in that moment they’re asking the wrong question. The right question should be, what should I stop doing immediately? That’s the first step. So if you think about it, if your cup’s already overflowing and you’ve got so much on your plate, adding more things to it, adding one more thing to it isn’t going to help. Even if it’s a good thing, it’s only going to add to that feeling of overwhelm. That feeling of I’m falling behind that feeling of I should be doing more, which is not what we want. So this framework’s really simple, but the sequence is the key here. All right, so stop, then start, then continue. So we’re going to break down each one. So let’s start off at the beginning with step one, stop. And this is the immediate relief.

Speaker 1 (01:43):

Yeah, this one’s the most important one. And as you said, if you’re doing 60 to 80 hours a week and you just get loaded up with more stuff, whether you choose to take on more things that you’re thinking are going to fix the problem, it’s not going to fix the problem. It’s just going to add more to your plate. And so that there within lies the problem. And so the easiest way to be able to do this is it’s your ability to be able to take a step back and look at your cup that is already full and you’ve got to be able to create capacity, you’ve got to take away before you can add in. And that’s what Stop is all about. It’s about what have you got to eliminate, what have you got to take out of your days and your weeks and your months of what you’re already doing at the moment? And it’s not literally defer it or whatever it is. It’s literally no, let’s stop it. Let’s eliminate it. It adds no value to our results that we’re getting right now. Let’s stop it, let’s eliminate it. Let’s get rid of it and make way for some more higher value things.

Speaker 2 (02:45):

And just to be absolutely clear, it’s not even just what do it better, it’s stop and it’s stop immediately. It’s like it’s done. I’m not doing this anymore. So let’s talk this through. What would go on the stop list for you?

Speaker 1 (02:56):

Well, it might be doing work for customers are low margin, low value. You’re doing work to keep busy, but it’s not adding to your bottom line.

Speaker 2 (03:07):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that goes for things that keep you busy in general. It’s tasks that aren’t adding any value if they’re task just for the sake of it. If you’re just looking at things and going, well, I do this because that’s just what I do. It’s just the routine I’m in, examine it. If it doesn’t lead to helping you reduce the chaos, if it doesn’t lead to being more profitable, if you can get rid of it, get rid of it. Tasks that don’t lead anywhere, we call them low value tasks. I think getting rid of those is an obvious first step.

Speaker 1 (03:35):

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s meetings that add no value, whether it’s a meeting on site, it’s a meeting with one of the builders you’re doing work for, it’s a meeting with your team that you’re kind of there showing face, but it adds no value from meetings for the sake of meetings, add no value. Obviously there’s certain important meetings you’ve got to be able to do, but if there’s no real results or outcomes you get from those meetings, why are you having them? Or even driving to site for an hour, being there for an hour driving home, why not just have a meeting over FaceTime, which is for 45 minutes and you’ve saved yourself two hours and 15 minutes. So there’s certain things that you will be doing, whether it’s travel or meeting or whatever it is, it adds no value. Just stop doing it and you’ll be amazed that you actually get to free up more time for the things that matter.

Speaker 2 (04:23):

Yeah, and I think over time, that’s a big one. Owners get stuck in that trap. I’ll just show up because I always have and that’s just the meeting I have. But you explore it and you look at it, you’ve now got a team around you sometimes that can do this, they’re already doing it. You’re just sitting there as a third wheel and repeating what people say. So really important. And I think another one then becomes those commitments that you either have had in the past or those ones that you’re still holding onto when you were sort of a bit, I suppose, desperate or the business was coming out of the ground or whatever it might’ve been, some of those things that you were doing, you don’t have to do anymore. They’re not serving you, so get rid of them.

Speaker 1 (04:59):

Yeah, correct. One of those things remind me is Zach from ZMH Metal Roofing. He’s been a client of ours and he’s had an episode here on the podcast and I remember the first thing when I had my first strategy call with him, I always unpack someone’s time and I think I’d say, what’s your role? Where’s your time going? And if we were to pie graph it, where would it be? And we uncovered that he was doing picking up materials and dropping them off on sites for probably a good hour, hour and a half a day. And I just said, mate, you’ve got to stop doing that immediately because you’ve got apprentices. Why are you doing that when you could be doing that? He’s like, well, Rob, it’s just something that I’ve inherited over time and it keeps my boys busy. And I’m like, well mate, your time’s more valuable, the apprentices time, you’ve got to get them doing that. And he stopped doing that that week. An hour a day, an hour and a half a day over five days a week is that’s a good five to seven days as a whole three quarters of his day a week back already just by stop doing something an hour a day. So there’s a great example where something sounds so small in isolation but adds up to a lot of time over a long period of time.

Speaker 2 (06:12):

Yeah, I think the rule is if there’s no benefit to it, if it’s not reducing your chaos, if it’s not helping you become more effective, more efficient, build a better team, develop trust, whatever it is, it goes on the stop list. That’s what goes on there. These things aren’t, I’m working on it, I’m not going to make it better. This is things, cut it completely and cut it now. That’s the first step. Step number two start. Once we’ve got our stops in place, we then move into start and this is the strategic shift that we’re trying to make. This is the things that only after though we’ve done the stop step. Let’s be really clear about that.

Speaker 1 (06:44):

Yeah. This is the most important one because once you’ve been able to claw back that time, you’ve been able to stop doing certain things. What you’ve then done is created capacity to be able to work on the things that are going to move the business forward. It’s working on the business on the priorities which are going to improve profitability, take it to the next level, drive sales, the strategic actions that you can do to be able to move this business forward and create better results for you and your family.

Speaker 2 (07:16):

Yeah. I know you love this. Where do you get strategic and where the rubber starts meeting the road? What goes on a start list? Typically when people are just starting out with this framework.

Speaker 1 (07:25):

This might be making a key hire where someone in your ground crew might be really looking at a part-time role in your office crew, whether it be getting some bookkeeping support in it could be bringing in some administrative support, maybe part-time to begin with. It might be jumping in there and really building new key relationships and becoming a bit more sales led and driving more work through the door. It might be working on some systems around your invoicing or your data management or your variation management. It could be anything from implementing some new job management system in your world to be able to help you improve the way that you quote or might be the way that you manage your jobs. It could be updating your pricing, like the list is endless, but it’s that one lever initially, which is going to take your business to the next level and either get you more time back by leveraging better or drive better bottom line results. But it’s making way for this strategic stuff which is going to help you move forward. And that’s the name of the game in business.

Speaker 2 (08:34):

Yeah, absolutely. I think a couple to add to that, a weekly planning meeting. I love going to that. Just have a weekly session with yourself, just even if it’s 30 minutes, a Sunday night, first thing on Monday morning, last thing you do on a Friday, start doing that weekly planning session with yourself and make it a non-negotiable, great thing to start doing if you’re not doing it. The other one I think is regular check-ins with the team. If you’re not meeting with your team, the people that you need to work with, usually the people that are going to annoy you later on in the week with all the interruptions and phone calls and things like that, setting up and starting to have a regular meeting space in your week is a great way to eliminate and cut those constant phone calls from side or the knocks on your office door, whatever it is for you.

Speaker 1 (09:15):

Yeah, we are pretty big on this in coaching that it’s one to two strategic plays. That’s it. It’s the most important thing. It’s the biggest thing that’s going to move the needle the most. And you’ve got to remember, if you’re already doing 50, 60 plus hours a week, time is scarce and time is limited. You don’t have a lot of time to be able to work on your business. So you’ve first got to be able to free up that time, create the capacity and choose the one thing which is going to help you take a step forward. You see that result through, get the outcome, tick the box, and then go, right, what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And you just take step after step after step, but the more you create the capacity, the more time you’ve got to be able to move forward, but you’ve got to create it before you work on it.

Speaker 2 (10:00):

Yeah, absolutely. Now step three, continue. These are the non-negotiables and this is overlooked a lot because people get so stuck on what’s broken. They’re not protecting what’s working, they’re not delivering on their strengths, there’s no development, there’s no progress. There’s just simply we’ve got to stop doing or we’ve got to fix everything. And that’s a danger in itself.

Speaker 1 (10:20):

Yeah, it is. And these are the things that in business success leaves clues and there’s a certain number of things that you know probably do over and over and over again right now, which create certain results in your world. And so it’s about not being caught in the temptation of constantly chasing the new thing. You’ve got to make sure you keep working on the foundational things that matter in your world to be able to keep driving the results you’re already getting whilst you’re in pursuit of getting better results in the business.

Speaker 2 (10:52):

Yeah. Alright, let’s go through a couple of examples of what goes on the continue list. What would be things to look for that are working well and you can add them on.

Speaker 1 (11:00):

Managing key relationships. That’s the first one.

Speaker 2 (11:03):

Love that.

Speaker 1 (11:03):

If you’re a sparky who’s doing work for builders and you’ve got half a dozen builders you’re doing work for, you can’t neglect those relationships. It’s about maintaining and managing those relationships. So the requests for quotes come in the door, you’re getting in doing your quotes, getting them out accurately in a timely manner and continuing to build on those relationships so you can keep winning work from those builders.

Speaker 2 (11:26):

Yeah, and it’s amazing how many times we see that’s the first thing to drop off. The one thing they should continue doing as a business owner, they drop off the minute they add to their list all the time. It’s always the case. It’s those things that drop off. What about, I think reviewing jobs is an important one. I think that’s a critical one that you can continue doing if you’re doing that. The consistency of renew of reviewing jobs is really, really important.

Speaker 1 (11:53):

Absolutely because it gives you feedback on your pricing. How did we go coming into the job? Did we price it right? Was there anything we missed? Do we need to tweak our pricing for our next job? And then how do we actually go on the job? We were expecting 35% margin overall in this job and we got 28%. Okay, well where did we fall short? What happened to that 7%? Was it a blowout of materials? Was it a blowout on labour? Did we not charge for variations along the way? What was the root cause of that? And you don’t know that if you’re not doing your back costings on your job. So yeah, that’s a one that you should be doing religiously.

Speaker 2 (12:30):

Yeah, absolutely. And if these aren’t on your continu list already, they could probably go into your start list. The other one is training your team. I think people think I’ve trained them. That’s it. They’re here. They’ve been here for a while now. I’ve done training, it’s over. But to continue doing, it’s really important.

Speaker 1 (12:44):

Yeah, they’re a qualified sparky, they should know how they’re doing things, but it’s having the ability to continue to upskill them and develop their capability just not only helps them perform better in their role, but helps take more off your plate as well as the owner.

Speaker 2 (12:58):

Yeah, absolutely. The last one I think is habits so important that people continue doing the things that work well for them personally.

Speaker 1 (13:06):

What I love about these continued list is these are the things that are the non-negotiables in your world. These are the things that, this is the success leaves clues in your world. You know that these are the things you’ve got to do no matter what, whether you feel like it or not. And once you continue to build on that list, you just know that these go in your diary first. You get ’em in, you religiously get them done. You don’t let them slip, and this is the baseline of things that you have to do within your week and you build your week around these things.

Speaker 2 (13:38):

Yeah, absolutely. So this week’s challenge, let’s talk about it. Here’s the homework. It shouldn’t take you too long, but what we want you to do is pull out a piece of paper and you’re going to make three columns. So you’re going to draw two lines on a piece of paper effectively to create three columns. You’re going to label them at the top. You’re going to say, start, this is left to right. Again, the sequence matters. Remember that stop, start, continue, stop at the left, start the middle, continue on the right. Then this week as you go through this, I want you to write everything that comes to mind under each heading. So go through your stop to start with, brain dump it. Don’t overthink it, just get it onto the page. Keep the pen moving if you need to. Give yourself a little block of time, so I’m going to keep writing for whatever time you want, but do the stop first, then go through what am I going to start and what should I continue?

(14:25):

Once you’ve got that list, then what you’re going to do is pick one thing. I’m going to say that again. You’re going to pick one thing from your stop list and you’re going to commit to eliminating that completely, not reduce it, not we’ve got to do that better, but eliminating it. What’s going to come off the list? What’s going to free up the space to allow you to do the next step, which is creating the space for one thing from your start list, and you’re going to add that into your calendar, into your schedule. You’re going to make a commitment that now becomes part of your non-negotiables. This thing, you’re going to start working on the start thing that comes off that middle column. And then the next thing you’re going to do is protect one thing on your continue list, whatever it is that’s on that continue list, put a mark against it and say, this week, that is absolute non-negotiable.

(15:12):

Everything depends on me doing that this week. And you want to be able to get to the end of the week where you’ve hit that, continue absolutely on the head. If it’s up for grabs, then it’s not a continue, it’s a start. So let’s be consistent with it, make sure we keep our commitments on our continue list. And then over time, what you’ll do after week after week, like Rob was saying, you can do the same process. What am I going to stop? What can I add? One thing at a time over time, and eventually you’re going to move from your stop list into your start list, and by the time you get through your start list, it should be just your continu list. So really important, great exercise, really simple framework, but like I said at the top, absolutely huge ramifications if you do it properly.

Speaker 1 (15:53):

What I love about this process is it’s not a one and done type of activity. It’s a continuation. I’ve been in business 15 years now, yet I’ve still got, and for those of you listening, I’m pointing over to my whiteboard at the moment, so if you’re watching the video, you’ll see me doing that, but in my office, I’ve got a whiteboard in there that says Delegate to team, and that’s my stop list. That’s the equivalent of my stop list. And there’s things on there that are sitting on that board, which have sat there for a little while because it’s not the right time that I can delegate it right now, but there’s been other things where I’ve gone, right? That’s how my stop lift and off I go. But this is a strategy that you can just keep doing over and over and over again because remember, in order for you to keep growing your business, you’ve got to shed to grow, shed to grow, shed to grow, which is stop, start, continue, stop, start, continue. The stopping is the shedding, the starting. The continuing is the growing. And so if you can get through this rhythm of having this in front of you, the list stays on your desk or you get a whiteboard or something up on your computer, in your notes section on your phone or whatever it is, make this not just a one and done thing. This can be something you do for the rest of your time. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it, Dan? But it’s the secret to be able to shed to grow, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (17:15):

Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, people, you’ve just got to stop adding your way out of something. Adding something more to something that’s already unmanageable is not the way out, but we all do it. We’ve all been there, but taking the moment to do it and doing the exercise is what allows, you said at the very top about putting those anchors down and stop being dragged down by what’s not working and trying to hold that and add even more to it. You’re just going to sink faster.

Speaker 1 (17:39):

Correct, and that’s why if you are sitting around that million dollar mark and you’re like, I’m doing a million bucks, but I’m doing 80 hours a week, why is it someone doing $5 million do it in a 40 hour week? That’s because what got them to $5 million is the thing that they stopped doing and the things that they started doing and the things that they stopped doing, they either eliminated it completely or it’s something that they started delegating out to their team and taking some hats off and all they go. But definitely there’s things that you should absolutely stop doing immediately, and there’s other things you should be delegating. So hopefully you’re starting to realise that by growing your business, it’s not about just taking more and more and more and more and more on. You’ve got to stop, create capacity, create the space to work on the things that matter, which you’re going to take your business and life to the next level.

(18:27):

If time is one of your biggest issues in business right now and you are ready to build a business that doesn’t consume every waking hour, then book a discovery call over @strategysession.com.au because the fastest way to get your time back isn’t to work harder. It’s to stop doing the things that don’t matter and start strategically working on the things that do matter that are going to take your business and life to the next level. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, this stop start, continue framework. It sounds so simple, yet it’s so effective. Make sure you get in, get rubber meeting the road and getting some of that time back so you can work on the thing that matter. Thanks for tuning in today and look forward to coming back to you next week with another episode of The Trade Den. Until then, take care.

Speaker 2 (19:11):

See you soon.