151. Learning To Delegate With Sky Kolade

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Look, if you have goals, you want to run a professional building company, you want to grow, maybe you already have a team in place, you just want it to fire more efficiently. You have to have people to delegate to and you have to be able to do it well so that you can grow, so that you can actually achieve the goals you're setting out for yourself. Foreign.

Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by APB co founder Sky Colday. Sky, welcome to the show.

Hey, Will, how you doing?

I'm doing very well. Love having you on the show, so welcome back.

Thank you.

Today we're talking about delegation. Do you want to kickstart by telling us what that is?

Yeah. I mean, even trying to define it right, because it's one of those words that everyone says. It's a bit of a buzzword, especially in any kind of coaching. You've got to delegate, delegate this, delegate that. So what does it actually mean? I think if we talk about it, even what it means for us at apb, if we talk to our team or even our builders or anyone about having to delegate or we need to delegate this, or it's having the ability to give a task, a responsibility, something to somebody else who's not yourself, whether that is one of your direct reports or someone else on the team, typically it's going to be a direct report, someone on your team, or even a contractor to do, and then you no longer have to do it. And this is such an important part to get right as a building company owner, because otherwise you're just going to be stuck doing everything. And if you start doing too many things, you don't really do them well anymore. So it's a huge, huge, huge part of running a professional building company.

Thank you.

Yeah, talk to me about the importance that you mentioned there and why it is so important for a building company. What are the signs that a builder may be not delegating effectively?

Yeah, Gosh. Well, I think it's when even Even if you put yourself in your shoes, right, and you're thinking, okay, I'm so busy, I can't take on something else, you know, when someone on your team even has a really good ide and your instant thought or someone else's instant thought is, yeah, it's a good idea. We just don't have time to do that. That is one of the worst signs because you're then prioritizing just being busy over being innovative and trying new things and really just working on improving what's happening in your building company. So if you ever find yourself where you notice other people on the team just aren't taking on new tasks, thinking of better ways to do things because they're just overloaded with work, they're too busy to be honest. Delegation is just one part of it. There are multiple things that you can do to help that. But we're here to talk about delegation. That is a sure sign that something's cooking. We really can probably delegate some of the stuff that's on your plate. If you find yourself overworked, burnt out, uninspired, honestly just not even enjoying your building company and the work that you do anymore are probably some signs that there's no doubt in my mind you have some tasks on your plate that can be delegated. Yeah.

In that scenario you just gave, then what would you say to a builder that pushed back on that, saying, well, no, I've prioritized all the tasks. That's why I'm not taking on new ideas.

It sounds like a good answer, but is it? I've prioritized tasks and that's why I'm not taking on new ideas. I think it's just a bit uninspiring and maybe just be honest, if you're not looking to grow, if you're not looking to be the leader in your market, if you're not looking to stretch ahead of the competition, sure, maybe that's a good answer if that's where you're at. But I think in our experience, certainly the builders we talk to and the ones that gravitate toward us at apb, you're probably not in that camp of, you know, what I'm doing is good. I've got all my tasks that they're a priority, and I'm not looking to implement anything new. You're probably not in that camp. So, yeah, it would be time to delegate and look at the inspiring new ideas. How can you be innovative? How can you grow? How can you do things better? How can your team do things better? You know?

Yeah, I like the word grow that you use there because I think that can be applied across multiple facets, whether it's the growth mindset or the growth of the business, that kind of thing.

Totally.

And if I guess you touched on it, like, not being able to delegate may be just an excuse, do you think?

I think so. Like, this is where you can actually see, and this is a big statement here, but you can really see poor leaders in their ability to delegate. Because if you ever have said the words or you've heard someone say the words, I can just do it better myself. It's actually a reflection on your ability to delegate, systemize, and train other people, not just the people you're talking about. I think it's quite arrogant to say, I can just do it better myself and no one's going to do as good a job as me. I think that is really arrogant to an extent. You're probably right. If you've gotten to this part in your life and you really are so skilled at what it is that you're doing, sure, maybe some other people aren't going to do it 100% to the T, to the letter that you can do something. Does it mean that you can't delegate to them? No, it's about reshuffling expectations because again, you're not going to be able to get very far. You know, what's that quote, Will, where it's like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So if you just want to be stressed, a hot mess running around like a headless chicken, sure, do it all yourself. But if you want to run a professional building company, that's going to grow, go far, be a leader in not only your local area, your whole community, have a great, wonderful team, have a great reputation, great culture. Well, you need to invest in your team. And with that comes delegating. And there's a whole process behind doing it well, because there are a lot of people that think they're delegating, but unfortunately, what I think they're doing is abdicating. And abdicating is really different because that just means you. You're saying, well, okay, you're here in this job. I can do it to this standard, off you go. And that's not delegating. It's certainly not delegating well. You're actually abdicating your job, your role, your responsibility to someone else to do. And it's like setting them up for failure. And, you know, and then they do fail. And what typically happens is then that person who abdicated, not delegated, goes, well, they weren't that good. Told you, it's only me that can do it. They take all the responsibility back on and at the end of the day they're just going to get overwhelmed, bitter, and their workload's too much and suddenly they're not happy again. So it's a suspicious cycle.

So what you're saying is like, the delegation process has broken down and it's not. And the tendency is to blame the person that couldn't do the task as well as you, but really it's the way you've delegated to them.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, there are definite, like, it's not always our responsibility or, sorry, our fault, I should say, like, we can't just always be a martyr and always blame ourselves. It's never the other. But if your first point, if your first avenue that you're going to go down is blaming the other person, I think you need to look at yourself. You're a very poor leader and a poor delegator. Because the way in which we can delegate a task, have we documented, do we have the right system in place? Have we onboarded and trained this person who's going to be taking over this task or responsibility, whatever it may be, and do we have the right checks, balances in place to keep track of it, make sure it's going smoothly, have open and regular communication and feedback loops to ensure they're getting constant training and feedback to make sure it's on track? Do we have all of that in place? If you have all of that in place, sure. Then you can look at the other person and go, okay, well, what's sort of missing here? Is it an attitude? Is it a culture fit? Is it a skill set? They're a great person. They just don't possess the skill set to be able to nail this. And you've done everything you can. That's a different story. But I think way way too often a lot of people just shortcut everything I just mentioned to go straight to. Well, they don't have the skills. They're rubbish. It doesn't work.

You know, you touched on it there in terms of some builders struggling to delegate because they feel like, you know, they should be able to do it all themselves, so they do it better than anyone else. What other reasons do you see that builders struggle to delegate effectively?

I think if they've never documented it, like, what it is that they're doing, they've never documented it they've never even put into words the process that they go through to do this particular task. You're really going to struggle to delegate it because you just. You sort of just don't even know where to start. Even creating a brief, like, here's what I need done. Like, it's all in your head. And that's such. That's such a struggle. It's honestly such a weight on your shoulders if everything's in your head as well, because you'll never be able to get help. So I think that's another huge reason a lot of builders would not even attempt to delegate, because you can't even create the brief right. Forget even staff members even trying to put out a contract job if you're using something like Upwork or Freelancer.com or even Airtasker, for example, if you can't even write out the brief of what you're looking to get done. That hurdle is so significant, you just never start.

Yeah, let's come back to that in a bit later, because I'm interested to hear how you would go about getting things out of your head, basically, because it sounds like that could be a big challenge. But before we dive into that, talk to me more about why delegation is so important for builders and what the benefits are.

Well, look, if you have goals, you want to run a professional building company, you want to grow, maybe you already have a team in place, you just want it to fire more efficiently. You have to have people to delegate to, and you have to be able to do it well so that you can grow, so that you can actually achieve the goals you're setting out for yourself. It is going to increase the entire efficiency of your building company. I don't even know a lighter way of putting that, because there are more people all working towards the same thing. Think of it like, you know, forgive the analogies here, but think about, like a huge rowing boat. I don't even know what they're called, but every single person is rowing in the same direction. And you add more people, you make the boat bigger, you can go further, you can go faster, because you're all rowing in the same direction. Imagine if it's just you in a teeny, tiny little boat and you're just paddling like crazy. You will never be able to catch up to that big, long rowing boat. Please, no one correct me on what that's actually called.

But I guess someone's rowing in the wrong direction. That's a totally different conversation.

Yeah, that's obviously going to hinder you, but even just say you're paddling like crazy, you are Ironman, you are fit, strong, healthy, you are fast. It's just you in that tiny little boat compared to one of those big long rowboats. And there are 10 people like you will never beat them. Never.

So there's the speed aspect and that's like the main driving force behind delegation. But are there any hidden downsides to just not delegating enough as well?

Hidden? I think, yeah, they're going to be obvious, right? But maybe what you may not have thought about or considered up until this point is if you do not delegate and you do not get out of a situation where it is all on you or all on a few team members and they haven't delegated, right. What happens when you, when you are tired, you are burnt out? Or to be honest, you've just been working a while, all year and you need a holiday. To be honest, it just means you can't have a holiday, you can't have days off or you can, but things go wrong, deadlines are missed, clients are unhappy. What happens when clients are unhappy where you get a bad reputation? What happens with a bad reputation? You don't get any new leads. Without new leads, you can't sign more contracts. Without new contracts, you can't pay the bills. And slowly you're killing your building company. That may sound dramatic, but it's as simple as that. If we cannot tighten up what's happening inside our building company, this ripple effect is huge. And it sounds obvious when you spell it out like that, but maybe, maybe it is hidden, maybe it is the silent killer because you're just not operating efficiently or effectively.

You mentioned the fact that being burnt out might result in poor performance in the business and all that kind of stuff. But that sheer fact of being burnt out is probably because a lack of delegation as well, right?

Yeah. And again, is that just you as a business owner, the building company owner? Is it some of the leaders on your team? Is it some of your team members? Because to be honest, we think that it's only us that can delegate. But if you can master the skill of delegation and you've got it down to a fine art, you can coach and mentor your own team members to do the same and you can build, build your team members up to be more and more valuable. The more that they can delegate what they do to other team members or contractors, they then have more time to work on even higher level and higher value tasks making themselves more valuable. And you get to be the one to coach and mentor them to do that. Now, if you don't, well, the opposite is also true because then they are less valuable. They're bogged down in a lot of tasks. And think about when you feel bogged down and overwhelmed and you're unhappy with the amount of workload, what do you think that's doing to your team members? Ultimately, team members can just say, see you later, go look for another job. You can't. You're stuck in your building company. But they have the ability to say, this isn't it for me. And I'm going to go. Because this, it's not marrying up. If they don't, maybe it's worse because it can lead to them being so unhappy and unsatisfied at work. It can just. It can. It's like, what is it? Like a rotten fish? The fish rots from the head. So it can create that awful, negative work environment. It's a nasty culture. No one enjoys showing up to work. And it's sort of failing in a different way altogether.

Yeah, it's the silent resignation or whatever that trend was.

Yeah. What was it? Quiet quitting.

Quiet quitting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They could just be checked out. Right? Like, why would they put in effort like you? Yeah, it's just coming back to you want to build your team up and if you can master these skills, honestly, any skill. Forget delegation for a second. Any skill that you can master that makes you a better building company owner, makes you a better leader. Think of the skills you are learning and how can you help teach and mentor your team members to learn those skills as well? Because it makes them better. Why not?

Okay, so delegation is super important. We've covered that off. Where can I get started? I'm a builder. I don't really know what to do next. How can I identify those tasks that are worth delegating?

Look, until you are advanced, you're going to get to the point when you're very good at delegating. And you're going to get to the point where you recognize, even if you have a new idea, you're going to want someone to run with it. You're going to recognize that it doesn't always have to be you. Maybe you suddenly have a moment and you realize, hang on, why am I this task? Someone else surely can do this for me. So you're going to get to that point with experience. And certainly if you've not been doing it effectively, we'll say, or at all up until this point, you probably have a plethora of tasks in front of you. So you don't just want to click your fingers and go, okay, I'm delegating it all. Because then you're just going to overwhelm other people again. You're abdicating, you're dumping it all on someone else. It's just not going to be effective. So until you're quite advanced, we're just going to park up.

Really.

If you're at the beginning, you've not been doing it effectively, you're sort of, you're not confident in how you're doing it. The system that we would recommend, and we've talked about it multiple times before, so it shouldn't be anything new. But we talk about dad, dad, the delete, automate, delegate step by step. We want to do it in that order so that you don't start going out of your way to delegate certain responsibilities or tasks when to be honest, it could have been automated or it could have been deleted altogether. Because I think even delegating the wrong tasks, forget about it being a waste of money and a waste of time to do that, to be honest, it's not inspiring for the right people to be getting these tasks because they might be thinking that in their head, maybe they're closer to it. They realize it's actually not worthwhile doing. You're spending all this time trying to convince them why they need to do it and the only reason you have is because you were doing it and you don't want to do it anymore. So park delegation for a second. I think if you want to get started with delegation, really take a moment and look at everything you're doing. We always talk about doing a two week time audit, which is for the next two weeks. Get a pen, paper, do it online if you're an online person. But seriously, document every single thing that you are doing for the next two weeks. Literally. If you are driving around sites, even for two hours, put it in a time block and just, you know, from 7:30 till 9:30 you were driving around visiting sites. Maybe from 2:30 till 5:30 you are answering sales inquiries. Whether it was half an hour, three hours, put it in detail and document all of the tasks that you've been doing for those two weeks. And that's really just a process of gathering data. If you can have all of that data in front of you by the end of the two weeks, it's really obvious where a lot of your time is getting spent and it can highlight for you honestly in very clear black and white where the Big time sucks are. And objectively, honestly, even without going through the rest of the exercise, you'll probably be able to go, huh, that's probably not the best use of my time. I probably shouldn't be the one driving around your site or answering these calls or mailing out a brochure when someone inquired. But if it's not that black and white and easy to see, this is why we go through the process, have all of that data in front of you and start parking it under different headings. So maybe a whole bunch of stuff goes under sales activities, some goes under marketing, some goes under this, that, etc. Etc. Again, just so you can separate it all and bucket by bucket, start rolling through those tasks and ask yourself the first question of okay, does this task need to be done? And what we're trying to do here is honestly just eliminate it. You'd be surprised, when you objectively think about it, you'd be surprised just how many tasks you could probably go, okay, no one's actually going to miss it if I don't do it, me included. And no one's begging for it to be done. So it could probably just get deleted. And that's actually amazing because you've saved yourself a lot of time and money. Time from doing it again, but money from paying somebody to automate it or do it for you. Now, if it has to be done, because people are very much going to miss it if it doesn't get done, yourself included, that's when you can move on to the A in D, A D. So we're on to automate. And this is really important because a lot of the time we are manually doing a lot of tasks that can just be automated. And my goodness, with the advances in AI at the moment, there's a lot that can be automated. Do not be bother going to pay someone, whether it's someone on your staff, on your payroll, or even contractors to do tasks for your building company, when these days a lot can get automated for you using artificial intelligence. So explore that, see how can it be done. Maybe it's not just AI, maybe it is a piece of software. Again, there are incredible bits of software out there that, to be honest, can eliminate an entire team member in some cases for I think what is in a lot of cases less than 10% of their annual salary. So why wouldn't you? But again, if you physically cannot automate it, you can't find a platform that can do it. That's when you move into delegation and that is when you take a moment and go, okay, I need to give this task to someone and that's where you need to identify who. Who do you give it to? Who is going to be the best person to give this task to In a lot of cases, and even if you look at the definition of delegation, it's typically to someone less senior than you. And the reason for that is it's going to be cheaper. Compare your hourly rate to the hourly rate of the person you're about to delegate it to. It should be cheaper than yours and therefore you're in front of. Does that make sense? Because you're not paying what you would be paid, you're paying what they would be paid and suddenly your time has freed up to work on more higher value tasks. So yeah, that was quite a long process there. It is simple, but you don't run straight to delegating. You've got to work up to it. And if you have made it through D, then A, and then we're back to D and it's D for delegate. That's when we can suddenly look through who is the right person to give it to, when am I going to give it to them? What skills do they need in order to complete this? What skills and or resources are they going to need? What's the time frame, what's the training I'm going to provide? And then how am I going to measure and have a feedback loop in place to make sure it's getting done the way it needs to? That's how you properly delegate without wasting anyone's time and or money.

I love that process, having been through it myself. The delete is my favorite. Just because it's so cathartic to go through that process and you feel like you've got such a weight off your shoulders when you go, hold on, this doesn't need to be done anymore so I can just delete it. It's amazing.

You know what as well, that part sounds really obvious. We've talked about this a lot of times and the amount of people, to be honest, that can scoff at that first bit, like, okay, everything I do is valuable. Sure, I know we like to think that, but a lot of the time we are in autopilot and if you objectively look at everything you do every day, I can almost guarantee you that every single person listening to this episode, if you genuinely and honestly look at everything you do, you're going to find one thing that probably could be deleted before doing anything else.

One thing you might find, which I've found personally before is if you've got great people on your team, sometimes they'll question, it's like, hold on, why are we doing it this way? Or why is this getting done still? And you're like, oh yeah, fair point.

Like we've made it anymore. Yeah. And that's why it's the best example if you've ever gone away on a holiday, but like a long holiday, like you've been away for a while or if you've had any extended time off for any reason. By the time you are back at work, your brain, your mindset is so distant from work that it's really, it's wide open by the time you're looking at everything again. So you're looking at everything with zero based thinking, fresh white eyes and it's even easier to spot. You're sort of like, we do not need to be doing this, that or that. We could be doing this, this and this 10 times better. Here's an idea over here and actually makes it easier. So this is not part of Delete Automate Delegate. But maybe the most important thing is always book extended periods of time off because by time you are back you can see it so much clearer. We always joke and we've talked about this for a really long time that you should always try. Like what we always say at APB is break the business, break the company, break the team, break whatever you want to be able to go away. And we joke about it internally like what broke while you were away? Because we want to know, okay, that's the next thing that needs fixing. That that's going to make it more and more robust so that nothing is dependent on any one person. We are building a system, an entire machine that can always service people right and not have things break down and things not happening because it's a whole team involved. That happens only when you leave. And if you only leave when you are burnt out, worn out, it means you've not put anything in place. So you're leaving probably involuntarily because you just needed a break and you, you got to that point of absolute overwhelm, you walked out one day. You don't want to get to that point. Take your regular consistent breaks so that by the time you're bracket you, you're just fixing things, you're improving it the whole time again, running through Delete Automate Delegate with fresh eyes each and every time.

It's almost like the chicken or egg situation though you're saying the easiest time to do it is after a holiday. But in order to get the holiday, you kind of need to do it first.

Exactly, exactly. But that's when you then focus on, like when you pre plan your holiday. Right. If you're thinking, okay, what could possibly go wrong in that time? You can pre plan a whole bunch of stuff, make sure you got the right systems in place, you feel comfortable enough to take off a period in time, there'll always be things that you forgot. And that's the beauty of it. But I think it's also about building a culture within your own company that embraces it. So it's like, cool, we spotted this, this went wrong, we fixed it, here's how. It's not never going to break again. That needs to be the culture. And I think that starts with you as the leader of the company as well. Because if you aren't saying it in so many words that when one of your team members goes away, they could start hiding mistakes because you're not embracing, okay, what broke? Is it fixed? How did we fix it? Well done. How about this idea? It becomes a collaborative approach and if that's not embraced, you run the risk of. If your team members do go away on holiday, for example, and something does break, they hide it, they hide it from you, they hide it from other team members, they try and fix it, then the communication is bad. It just, it doesn't foster a good culture.

Good point. Okay, so you've made it through da and you're up to d. You want to delegate some tasks. How do you effectively communicate those tasks and the expectations to the person that you you've chosen to delegate to?

Wonderful question. The most important thing, before you even tap the person on the shoulder, is documenting everything possible about the task. And I'm even talking about the brief. To be honest, if you're thinking, okay, there's a task here that I really shouldn't be doing. My hourly rate is a lot higher. I can get anyone else doing it for a lot less money based on their hourly rate. This is something I need to hand over. Write it down. What is that task? What are you naming it, what's the title and what is the description? I do not mean writing a War and peace on it. It's not an entire like 487 page report. It is just getting excruciatingly clear. Because like I mentioned before, if it's all in your head, how on earth can you bring someone in and train them on it? You can't. So you're going to have to get really clear documenting it. What is the task and what is a very quick description of it. What is the purpose of it? Like, why does it need to be done? You'll find this as well. This is going into different personality types. Excuse me, but when you start growing your team and you've trained more than one person, you probably have seen this, that some people are a lot more intense and a lot more dependent on needing to know the why when you assign a task. Some people, Some people really don't care and don't need it. They're like, sure, yes, whatever you need. Like, I can get on and do it. And like, they're lovely, I love them. But some people, they're not being difficult. It's a personality trait. They need to know why, because if they know why, then they know the importance of every step. Embrace those people on your team because it feels difficult. It feels like, God, can you just do it? Like, I've documented it. I just need this task done. But embrace people who really question why, because it gets you really clear on why it does need to be done. And this is why every single step matters in this checklist and why the order is important. And because they're asking why and they're challenging you, it makes you build it so much more robust and they take a lot more responsibility for it. So there really are two kinds of people in this world. Both are great, they've got pros and cons. But just be very aware because if you do not think about the why in advance of giving it to some, giving or delegating, I should say, a task or responsibility to someone and they ask you, you're going to be put on the spot and it's better to have really thought it out first because then you can get it in the right order. You can get all the training done, you can get all the steps in the checklist ready to. To go.

I'm one of those annoying people that ask for the why. I think. Sorry about that.

Okay, talk to me about technology.

What tools will help builders more effectively delegate?

Gosh. Look, in terms of assigning a task, there are heaps of software platforms in terms of monitoring a task. Again, there might even be different software platforms depending what the task is. And then even checking in on the work, there's going to be different recommendations there. It very much depends on the task at hand or responsibility or whatever it is, what it is that you're actually delegating and like, how it needs to be actioned and get done. Very simply, though, even just think of it in terms of Your project management software. As a professional building company owner, I have no doubt in my mind that you're already running project management software to manage the construction of your new homes or your remodels. So could it go in there? Possibly. It just obviously depends what task it is. Maybe it's nothing to do with an actual project or on site. Maybe it's more so to do operationally in the building company. So turn your focus over there. What platforms are you already using? Because I think the worst thing we can do is when we try and delegate, we're thinking, cool, I'm delegating to take workload off of my plate. But if to do that you need to add learning 10 new bits of software, all these productivity things, that doesn't help, that actually adds more work to your plate. So work out how it can fit into how the company is already running. And then once you've delegated using the systems you already have, then you have the time, space and capacity to think, okay, now how can we take it to the next level and do better? So I think using the systems already available to you. So whether that's your CRM software, you can assign tasks, whether that's HubSpot or, gosh, any one of the CRM platforms. So your project management software, is that one of the many project management softwares out there, like buildertrend for example? Maybe. Though, depending how big your building company is, you might have other, for lack of better word, productivity software. Maybe you are using Asana, Trello, Monday.com, clickUp or does anyone use Microsoft Project anymore? Probably not. Or Outlook Taskbar or something like that. But I think definitely keeping it within a software, it's a lot easier to keep track of and maintain. If you're thinking you're just delegating by flicking out emails to people, assigning them jobs, that's not really delegating, that's just, you know, sending emails asking for things to be done. How is it going to get managed, how is it going to be repeatable? How is it going to be, you know, there's going to be a consistent outcome each time you need to look at the systems you've got in place and build it in there. For sure, that's definitely going to be the best way to keep track of it all.

Yeah, definitely. One tool that came to mind when you were talking about AI and then talking about trying to get tasks out of a builder's head was the dictation feature with ChatGPT on the desktop app. I know we were Chatting about that internally the other day, that's a really powerful way. If you're, if you're a verbal, if you, if you're talking a lot, like a lot of builders are, you can easily just talk into that and it dictates it for you and then turns it into something which could be a documented process that you pass on to someone 100%.

And I tell you what, this is quite revealing if I say this. If at any point you have a thought that I do not infrequently of, like, I just have a lot on, I really just would love an assistant because there's a lot of things I just want to be able to talk about and have it done. It's quite revealing. But I think we've all had that thought at times because you just have so much in your head, you just want to be able to say it rather than type it all out. Assign and it goes to the right person. Suddenly it's a lot of work. As soon as you have that thought, just remember what is available to us. These days with AI, you can actually talk it out loud. Everyone has an assistant in their pockets. If you use tools like ChatGPT, like any other AI tool out there, because you can actually just talk into your phone, talk into your computer, get your thoughts down and they can even like clean it up for you, make it look ten times better than you could, and suddenly you're on your way there, is your assistant there, and then see if you ever have one of those thoughts. It's the perfect example of delete, automate, delegate. It couldn't not be done, could not be thought of, couldn't be put out there. But rather than hiring an assistant to tidy all this up for you, automate it, use the tools available and they can do it pretty well, shockingly well, like scarily well when you start using them.

Yeah, absolutely. Talk to me about how builders can ease into it. What are some common tasks that builders can delegate?

Yeah, look, it's obviously going to differ for every single building company. The size, the location, Gosh, anything but the most common ones that almost every building company owner is going to have. Think about you, your simple admin tasks. What administrative tasks are you doing that you just don't need to? Whether it's scheduling appointments, whether it's, to be honest, even replying to emails, answering the phone when sales inquiries come in. TBV trust. But verifying invoices that come through, to be honest, a lot of the bookkeeping. This is really interesting. How many building company owners still do the bookkeeping at this stage. Really, really simple things that you can find people either at a cheaper hourly rate than yours. So you can find someone that's a lot cheaper than you to do the task, but slash or are probably better at it than you. No offense. No offense. But the amount of building company owners that do do their own bookkeeping that don't have a background in it, you can find other people that are really good at bookkeeping, they actually enjoy it and they could probably do it a lot faster than you as well. If it ticks those boxes, it ultimately is actually cheaper than you doing it because if you don't enjoy it, you're not particularly good at it and it takes you a really long time to use those platforms. That's costing you a lot of money. So, you know, look for other experts as well. I probably, you know, forgot to mention that earlier on. Just because someone can do it cheaper than you, that's one option. But who can do it better than you? That's a, that opens up huge window of opportunity.

It's costing you money or potentially costing you time at night or something like that, when you could be spending that with, with your family or.

And then think of the mistakes. Think of at year end when your accountant has to go through everything and you've like done things not, you know, too good and you're paying all this extra money because they then have to go fix it or clean it up or wasting all this extra time because they're clarifying, you know, you started putting things in the wrong spot and, you know, the accounts suddenly don't make sense or they're not as good as they should have been. So yeah, it's ultimately costing you a lot of time and money. That's one example. Of course, not everyone does their bookkeeping wrong. It's just, you know, a few examples have come up recently. But yeah, they're super common. A lot of office administrative tasks.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And builders could be using their time on much more high impact tasks for the business.

Absolutely even. I mean, here's another example. Your social media feeds, especially something like Instagram, for example, it's just an online gallery. It's a photo and video app, let's be honest. So you want to make sure that you're posting the most gorgeous pictures of your homes. I'd venture a guess to say hopefully not many of you guys, as the listeners to this podcast episode, are taking your own photos because you're probably not photographers. So you're not taking your own photos on of your finished projects. So if you're not taking those photos, you shouldn't be editing them. And to be honest, you probably shouldn't even be posting them. That is a really low value task that you can get somebody else to do again in bulk because if you're doing it, you're probably having to stay on top of it every couple of days. But here's a whole gallery. Here's a lot of interiors, exteriors. Here are the 10 different homes of all these pictures. Send it off to someone, get them all edited, cropped, get the captions written and then get them all scheduled. And then you're suddenly using the best of both worlds. You're delegating a lot of the work, but then you're automating the posting so it goes out on time. We can see this play out in real life. You can look for examples and there are examples everywhere. You just sort of got to then apply it to your own building company and embrace it. Think, okay, how can I take that to the next level? That's my social feeds. How can I then automate the process of we've just signed a contract, there's this, this, this, this, this task that needs to happen afterward. How can I of a workflow and it tasks all the right people with the next things to do once that contract is signed. That is what takes your building company to the next level.

Yeah, the two examples you gave the bookkeepers and you know, the marketing team or whatever it is, it reminded me of the, the partner, the APB preferred partners as well. Because it doesn't necessarily need to be internally for members out there. They can work with APB preferred partners, get a cash rebate and outsource these things for something which is probably a lower cost than hiring someone internally as well.

100% because as well, if you have to hire everyone to do everything in your building company, you'd have a very bloated payroll, very bloated fixed expenses because you're hiring what an entire person to do this role, that role, that role, especially as a smaller building company, you're probably not going to have more than 10, 12 staff before you start getting into a lot of bigger of a company. So if you only have that many staff and I suppose salaries available, when you look at what your fixed expenses can be, I don't know if you're going to hit a cap to be honest, of how much you can delegate. So you've got to start looking elsewhere and utilize absolute experts that you only need you Know, for a short amount of time, you've just finished building a home, get a professional photographer in for a couple hours to do a photo shoot. You don't need to employ someone to do that. Like, it's probably only going to be once a month. A couple times a month maybe for a photo shoot. So. Such a good point. Utilize third parties. Utilize, we call them, like contracting it outright. And that's a perfect example. If you go to the APB rewards directory, you can find software where you can automate things, but also services. So you can get your bookkeeping done, you can get marketing done, advertising, et cetera.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you've delegated some tasks, you found the people within in your organization or you've outsourced it. Like we were just talking about what happens if you encounter resistance or poor performance once you've done that Delegation.

Well, resistance is interesting because that's when you're really going to have to understand where is the resistance coming from? Because then it's like, okay, is this a cultural problem? Have I sort of fostered a bad culture up until this point that people aren't willing to take on more work? Or if it's not culture, it's not like attitude is the resistance coming from. They just simply can't do it because nothing is documented. You're really going to have to go deep diving and looking for the answer there. And to be honest, sometimes it's the answer we don't want to hear. But they're the most important ones to listen to. But I think the other thing you mentioned, Will, was poor performance, right? What do we do if they're not doing it well? And I think that's the same thing. You've got to be able to look, okay, are they not doing it well because it wasn't documented? Or is it documented and they're not following the documented process? Because once you have it documented, it's really easy to spot. Well, they did it wrong because the process was wrong. There's no one to blame but ourselves. Or are they doing it wrong because they are just, you know, going, doing their own thing, their own version of the process. They're deviating, they're going rogue, and that's not a reason to take it away from someone. If someone needs extra training, mentoring, maybe, maybe it's actually giving the why they need to understand why it's so important, important that needs to happen. But if you have trained, onboarded them correctly, you've stayed on top of them, you keeping them accountable, you're inspecting what's getting done, what gets inspected, gets respected, as they say. And after a lot of meetings, they're just not able to do it. Maybe it's their skill set, for example. That's when you need to make a decision. Just, just because one person couldn't do it right doesn't mean the next person you then give it to also can't do it right. Don't let one bad experience stop you from moving forward. Again, that is a big mistake I think a lot of people make, especially early on in the delegation journey, you have one bad experience. You hear this a lot, actually with staff. When people employ their first or first few staff members and they had a really bad experience, they think, no, I'm not never employing someone. Again, nothing but a headache. It can be so good. So don't let that one or even a couple bad experiences hold you back. Because if you can get it right, it's incredible and it will, will open you up and will allow you to achieve your goals. But at the end of the day, if it's not getting done right, it's not getting done correctly and how it needs to happen, your reputation's on the line, you're building company's reputations on the line. The quality client outcomes are on the line. You need to fix the problem as quickly as possible. And ultimately, if it means taking back that task, it was delegated and you've got to take it back because that person couldn't handle it, so be it. But then have that, that quitting point essentially of when, what's the deadline, when are you going to have it handed to someone else? Who are you going to go looking for? When are you going to get that handed back over? Don't go backwards. It's one step back, two steps forward after that point and it's all a learning experience, right?

If it doesn't work out, then you probably should take some ownership as well as to maybe you didn't delegate it.

Effectively or even set clear expectations. Because we don't want just typing monkeys, essentially. We want people to be able to take over a task, get trained in the task, but then give them the why and to be honest, enough of the background so they can then spot, well, look, I did this task perfectly. It's still not the outcome we're looking for. And then they can, they can give you a feedback loop. Feedback doesn't just go one way. You want to train people in such a way that they can go, okay, look, follow this ABCD perfectly all these steps. I know. However, that this is the outcome we're looking to achieve and this is what you expected. We didn't get that. We got this. Let them give that feedback to you, but then build a culture of, okay, if you're telling me something that broke, what's your idea to fix it? How can you fix it? What's an idea? Have you already fixed it? For example, that's going to be super important. So teaching the why so that then people can look out for if it breaks. Because if you're just teaching people do this, this and that and it's good no matter what. As long as you did this, that and that, it just doesn't have as much impact.

Awesome. Well, sky, thanks so much for all the tips you've shared today on delegation. There's loads of value in there for the builders out there. Where would you recommend builders go next to learn more about this topic and get started?

Gosh. There's a lot of information, honestly a lot of noise about delegation out there as well. I think it's something everyone talks about. I think the order is really important though. So something we talked about today was delete, automate, delegate that. In particular, we go into a lot more detail in one of our trainings that's available for members. It's one of our action plans. It's called managing your time and efficiency. So as a member of apb, I definitely head in, complete that action plan. And to be honest, if you're at a different part in the journey, if your stumbling block is not identifying what needs to be delegated, maybe it's in documenting and so systemizing a procedure, maybe it's in training a team member. That's when I would look to the other operational specific action plans for what you're after. Because we have a recruiting and training team members action plan. We've got how to create systems action plan available. So I would go really granular to solve the exact problem. Obviously that's only available to members. Shameless. Plug. If you want to join as a member of apv, absolutely. Come on board. Because they are specific. There are templates to get you started as well. So you can just hit the ground running and that's going to be so valuable. I think hopefully even just listening to this conversation so far you've understood how important delegating, but delegating and doing it right, how much that is going to impact your building company. So that's definitely where I'd start.

Yeah. Perfect. Well, thanks again, Sky. I've loved having a chat today.

Thanks, Will. Thanks for having me on board.

Awesome.

Also, a big thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports, or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus Root will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you Precision Construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

The goal.