Episode 98 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve over a 12 month period if you just focus on one or two things per quarter. 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. Looking forward to getting stuck into part two.

Speaker 2 (00:20):

Yeah, good to be back, Rob. Hi everyone. Yeah, really looking forward to it as well. It’s been a while since we’ve done a part two. How are you going?

Speaker 1 (00:26):

I’m doing really well. Looking forward to cracking into today, and it might feel like last week’s episode and this week’s episode are a little bit teaching, but they’re designed to do that because this is the real practical side of goal setting and planning where rubber’s really got to meet the road. But we’re almost just trying to take the listener through the process of really getting pen on paper and getting this right to kickstart this year to make it an absolute belter yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:52):

Yeah, it is. And you’re absolutely right. I mean, this is what we do with our clients. So we are treating this as if we were in the classroom together, we were taking you through it or were on a call, whatever it might be to actually get your vision, your roadmap done. So if you haven’t already done so, please make sure you’ve listened to the last episode so you’ve got clarity on what you want. And as we said, you’ve answered some big questions on where you want your business to be and your lifestyle, but that clarity without a roadmap is just a wishlist. So really wishes don’t build businesses, but strategic plays now do. So going from what you want into how you get there is exactly what we’re going to be breaking down today, which is how to turn your 12 month vision into quarterly roadmaps that actually work. Before we dive in though, let’s just get clear on something really quickly, and that’s the difference between a goal and a strategic play.

Speaker 1 (01:42):

This is a huge one that it’s like when we spoke a lot around the pricing of markup versus margin, it’s interchangeably used when it comes to goal setting. This is one of those things where a lot of people get it wrong. They interchangeably use goals and strategic plays in the wrong way. Now we’ve got to remember what a goal is that a goal is an outcome that you want. It’s the outcome that you’re chasing. Whether that’s $2 million, 15% net, 45 hour weeks and two to three weeks holiday per year. That’s an outcome. That’s what you’re striving to achieve in the next 12 months. But we’ve got to remember a strategic player is not what you want, but how are you going to get there? It’s the strategy to be able to make that goal a reality. So is it a key hire? Is it a pricing strategy? Is it understanding your numbers better? Is it implementing systems or a job management system or whatever it is? What are all the strategic plays you’ve got to work on over the next 12 months to be able to make that goal an absolute reality? So we’ve got to be really mindful in business that we don’t use the wrong word in the wrong way. Last week’s episode was the what today is about the how, which is the strategic play to be able to make that goal a reality.

Speaker 2 (03:03):

Without that strategic play, that number that you’re writing down and that you’re focused on what you want just becomes a number on a whiteboard like any other.

Speaker 1 (03:10):

Yeah, correct. And I think if we just zoom out of the business world for a moment and think that it go into the health world, for example, guys might be, well my goal this year is to run three times per week. It’s like no running is a strategic play to be able to achieve a health goal. Is that a certain weight, a certain belt size, a certain of body fat.

Speaker 2 (03:38):

Or an event that you’re trying to compete for.

Speaker 1 (03:40):

Or an event that you’re trying to achieve, that’s the outcome that you’re chasing. The strategic play is the nutrition, the sleep, it’s the hydration, it’s the training and the exercise that you do. So it kind of makes sense there in the health world, but we’ve got to be able to transfer that use of goal and strategic play into the business world. So we get it right, otherwise we focus on the wrong thing over the 12 months.

Speaker 2 (04:03):

Yeah, absolutely. We start to get lost again. We start to wander off into the myths of all the different things that we can do because really there’s a lot of, there’s hundreds and thousands of strategic plays that you could pick to hit an outcome. So we’ve got to get clear on the ones we want, right?

Speaker 1 (04:18):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:19):

Alright, so let’s do this. So let’s talk now around the power of strategic plays and what we call the so that concept. Okay, so let’s think about how we’re going to talk about the year and that is that the lion’s share of your results are going to come from a handful of strategic plays each year. That’s how it works. Not 50 things, not some massive long to-do list, but a handful of plays. That’s what it comes down to. And at the end of the year, whether or not you’ve executed against that handful of plays, what’s going to determine whether the year was one that moved you forward or one that was just a repeat of last year or the years previous that we talked about on the last episode? So the ability to zoom out and focus on the four to eight, we’re going to call it four to eight, you’ll see why in a moment. But the four to eight strategic plays that are going to really have the most material impact on your business and in your life, that’s what separates the business owners that thrive and those who stay stuck, they’re really clear on what their strategic plays are and how they link to a specific goal.

Speaker 1 (05:19):

Yeah because you’ve got to remember, in the end of the day, we’ve still got a business to run. We’ve still got jobs to get done, we’ve still got to win the work, we’ve still got to price that we’ve got to convert. That’s the working in the business. Even though you may not be on the tools full time, you’re still in the business running it. These strategic plays are the things that you’re doing to work on the business to improve it, to move it forward. And so even if you’re working a 50 hour week, you’re probably still doing 45 to 48 hours a week working in it. It’s the couple of hours that you’ve got per week, per month, per quarter that you’re working on to work on it to be able to move this business forward. And like they say, most people overestimate what they can achieve in this period, but underestimate what they can achieve in a long period of time. So we’ve got to be careful we’re not setting ourselves up to fail by working on far too many things in a too shorter period.

Speaker 2 (06:13):

Yeah, absolutely. So we’ll break that down and how to sanity check that towards the backend. Let’s start though by looking at some examples around what would a strategic play be. Again, let’s keep it to the basis of the questions we answered in the previous episode. So it should be around either business or lifestyle or their numbers.

Speaker 1 (06:33):

Yeah, great. So let’s look at some of those examples. Offloading some LVTs to your ground crew so that you can reclaim four hours per week on high value work. Hire an onboard an apprentice so that you can unlock capacity and balance out that you’re ground crew, hire and onboard a tradesman so that you can unlock capacity and bring some experience into your ground crew. Hire and onboard a leading hand so that you can improve onsite management, give direction and drive productivity. Hire an admin and offload LVTs so that you can reclaim your nights and weekends. Hire a bookkeeper so that you can offload accounts and get clarity around your numbers. Implement or optimise a job management system so that you can improve productivity, performance or profitability. Optimise your pricing strategy so that profitability can improve. Implement a job costing system so that gross margin can be tracked on each job business development and win for new builders so that we can diversify our customer base and unlock the next phase of growth. Establish an invoicing and a variation management system so that we can improve profitability and cashflow. So there’s an example of a number of strategic plays that any business owner can work on over a period of time. It was the strategy and the so and the context around it.

Speaker 2 (08:22):

Rob, that’s a great list. I wasn’t expecting you to quite rattle off that many, but really good. And there was a real pattern there too. Every strategic play had a so that attached to it and as you listen to those, there were two parts. There was the strategic play upfront and then there was the outcome that strategic play unlocks, which happens after the so that piece. So every time you put out a strategic plan, you have the so that you’re tying it back to what should be your goal or your outcome. But if it’s something completely different to what you’d already sort of said, then you’ve got to look at it and go, well, is that really something that I should be working on? So that’s really what it’s about because without the so that you can just end up being really busy with it, you’re going to be building towards something and that something is what you tied down in our previous episode when we set the goal in the first place.

Speaker 1 (09:10):

Yeah, correct. Because the goal is generally around a time goal, a team goal or a money goal. It’s generally going to fall in under one of those categories. So there might be a time strategic play which links to that time goal. There’s a team strategic play which connects to a time or a team outcome that you’re trying to chase or a financial strategic play so that it gets context and a bit of why it’s a bit of meat behind that strategic play which connects to the financial goal that you’re chasing. And that’s why I like doing it that way because what it does is it creates context, it connects the strategic play to the goal and it gives you a sense of purpose, like you said before, it gives you that oomph to be able to go, oh, it connects the dots in my mind. I know why I’m working on that. It’s going to create that and that’s why this is a two part series. First the what, then the how and we’re connecting the dots now to be able to make all this a reality.

Speaker 2 (10:10):

Yeah, absolutely. So once you’ve got that list of strategic plays in your mind and you’ve done your challenge and you’ve gone through and written all this stuff down, the next thing, and this is where people go wrong, is that they then go, right, I’ve got my list. And then they try and do everything at once. They want to hire all the people at once, we’re going to implement those systems and we’re going to put in this process and we’ve got to get our pricing and I better go out and sell. And the rule that we run by at Pravar is that less is more.

Speaker 1 (10:37):

Yeah. What we’re focusing on is one to two strategic plays per quarter. And that’s why you would’ve heard Dan talk a bit about before where it’s four to eight per year. Now what we’re doing is chunking it down and we’ve got our 12 month strategic plays of four to eight. Now we’re chunking it down per quarter where it’s one to two per quarter over the 12 month period because what it enables you to do is focus on, as Dan said, less is more and you’re focusing on one to two things which create a real outcome in that quarter. Not a big long laundry list of a million things you’ve got to get done over the next three months and you’re setting yourself up to fail. You never really knock anything over because you’re far too bloody overwhelmed.

Speaker 2 (11:20):

Yeah. The name of the game now is about execution, which is really what we want. So let’s look at it, and I’m going to put you on the spot a bit, but let’s break down some of those examples and maybe run through now an example of when to do these plays. So over 12 months worth of strategic plays broken down into a quarter. What would that look like?

Speaker 1 (11:39):

This is a real life example of a client’s 12 months plays that we did in launch, and this hopefully gives you some context around what it looks like. So quarter one was offload LVTs or low value tasks into the ground crew in particular it was delivery of materials on the site. The second strategic play was hire and onboard an admin person. So there’s two strategic plays for quarter one. For quarter two was do business development, a focusing in particular winning two new builders and hiring and onboarding a tradesman to be able to unlock capacity and be able to deliver that work from those new builders. And again, two strategic plays for that quarter. Quarter three was optimising a pricing strategy. Quarter four was implementing invoicing and variation management in that quarter, again, two. So we can see that it’s two in quarter one, two in quarter two, one in quarter three, two in quarter four, which are somewhat connected, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 strategic plays over a 12 month period broken down into a 12 month strategic plays broken down into quarters, broken down into bite-sized pieces. It’s realistic, it’s easy to execute, which is going to create huge big momentum for that business owner over the next 12 months.

Speaker 2 (13:10):

And if you’re sitting there struggling around, well, I could get all this done and worrying about the timing, breaking it into quarters is an absolute game changer. Not by month, not by once I’ve ticked one off, then I’ll just move to the next one. But giving yourself that definite piece of time. And like you said at the start, if it’s only one per quarter and you’re only doing four, that’s fine. It’s not a race. It’s about getting the stuff executed rather than just knowing that you’ve got it on your plate.

Speaker 1 (13:31):

Even that example of the pricing strategy, which was in quarter three, it genuinely takes three to six months to optimise your pricing. You’ve got to be able to get in there and understand your cost base, understand markup versus margin. You’ve got to then be able to go back into your estimation software or into your spreadsheets and really tweak them and understand it and play with some pricing and get feedbacks on jobs you’ve won. I haven’t won and it genuinely takes three to six months. Whereas where guys go wrong as they go, oh, well I’ve done my pricing, tick that box, move on to the next thing. But they haven’t actually actualized the result of fixing their pricing strategy and they tick the boxes on strategic plays rather than actualizing the outcome of working on that strategic play. So less is more get it done right, actualize the result, move on to the next thing and you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve over a 12 month period if you just focus on one or two things per quarter.

Speaker 2 (14:29):

I think the other one, while we’re saying, you’re talking about being realistic with the timeframes, another one is hiring just really quickly. People underestimate hiring all the time. It’s like, well, I can put an ad up, I can get someone in and away we go. I could get that done in a few weeks, but it’s not the case at all.

Speaker 1 (14:44):

Correct. You think about a hiring process is, well, you first got to get your role on a page done, then you got to get your seek ad done, then you’ve got to get it up. You’ve got to wait your four weeks to be able to get candidates in and then you’ve probably got to be able to phone interview, face-to-face interview, make an offer, and then they might need to be able to give two to four weeks notice. There’s three months gone already before you’ve actually got someone in the seat and then you’ve got to train and onboard them, which is another three months. So you’re right, even though we’re just saying hire and onboard an admin person, that’s a six month journey in its own just to get right from getting the role on a page all the way through to feeling confident and that can run from there. It’s a long process, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (15:30):

It is. And this is why the goal being attached to it. So that is important because it gives you the reminder of why it’s important to do it because it becomes less urgent over time. It becomes more important that you do it. And having the goal attached to your strategic play always keeps that locked in. So I think the investment of time is worthwhile to do that over three to six months. People will be sitting, I can hear everyone listening to this now. Someone out there will be going, I haven’t got time to do six months to bring on someone. That’s crazy. But in reality, if you’re going to do it right and you’re going to get the time back or the goal or whatever you attach to offloading those LVTs, then it makes sense and all of a sudden you’re more committed to seeing it all the way through.

Speaker 1 (16:11):

Especially if you’ve been spinning wheels for three years prior, what’s six months in the whole scheme of things. And if you do it right, you get the person in, there’s your nights back, who wouldn’t spend six months getting an admin person dialled in so you can get all your nights back. It’s a no brainer, but you just got to go through the process and actualize work on the strategic play to actualize the result you’re chasing. And if you just stack quarter on quarter on quarter on quarter, this is why we see that clients, they transform their business and life over a two to five year period, they stack quarter on quarter compared to the two to five years prior where they really haven’t had any momentum. So this is how you roadmap and turn your goals and dreams into a reality.

Speaker 2 (16:57):

I love it. Should we break this down into a bit of a challenge and just sort of summarise the action steps coming out of this part two? So let’s start it with, make sure you’ve got your answers to part one done. Again, I’m going to keep saying that because understanding what you want is the starting point for all of this. If you dunno what you want, you’re just going to have a to-do list at the end of the day and no one wants that as we do this as a goal setting exercise. So make sure you can answer that question, what are my 12 month goals, turnover, net profit, roll and hours worked? What does family like? All those things that we talked about on the last episode. Then you’re going to break it down and just like Rob did on this episode, and you can even use the ones he gave you as an example, but go back and come up with, well, what are the four to eight strategic plays that I’m committing to focus on in the up and coming year?

(17:43):

That’s the step. So you get your list together and then what we want you to do is break it down into quarters and start off with, well, what are the first one to two strategic plays that I need to focus on in quarter one? Now that’ll give you your starting point and then you can do the rest. If you’re feeling confident and you haven’t got massive strategic plays, you’re going to take half a year go out and do the rest of the other, what it be six into the other quarters for the year and break them down that way. So if you’ve got that done by the end of this task now and the end of these two episodes, you should have a really clear idea about your goals. Then you should have them broken down into strategic plays with the so that attached to them so you don’t lose sight of the goal and then you’ve got it broken into the quarters as to when you’re going to go off and execute these things. So that’s the whole encompassing activity over the two episodes that we’ve done so far.

Speaker 1 (18:35):

I love it. And for some people, this whole process can feel really foreign or it can feel really overwhelming and that’s why it’s important to be able to get this right. So if you’re in that position where you are starting this year and you’re like, you know what? I want to make this the best year that I’ve ever had, and you want clarity or confirmation that your goals are right and the strategic plays are right and you’re looking for coaching to be able to help you have the accountability and implementation to be able to make those goals and strategic plays a reality, then jump across to your strategysession.com.au. Book yourself in a discovery call. Let’s talk through where you’re trying to go, what you’re trying to achieve, and we can see if it’s all in the right or, and it all makes sense that we can talk next steps for coaching to be able to help you implement them and be able to make them a reality.

(19:29):

We hope you’ve enjoyed these last two episodes. This is a skillset. Remember that we said that at the start of episode one that the goal setting and planning and road mapping is a skillset that the more you do it, the absolute, the better that you’re going to get at it. So make sure you get in, have a crack at the challenges. Get your year set up. Don’t front load the year. Let’s get in there and be consistent throughout the year so that you can look back and go, wow, wasn’t that an absolute cracker of year and I’m so proud of what I’ve done. What a great episode, Dan. What a great series and looking forward to hearing from our listeners of what they’ve been able to achieve yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:06):

Yeah, absolutely. I hope you listeners keep Rob very busy checking off roadmaps and what you’ve come up with so far with discovery calls. So really looking forward to cracking on and let’s make it a big year.

Speaker 1 (20:17):

Until then, take care.

Speaker 2 (20:19):

See you soon.