23. The Time Management Myth With Russ, Sky and Andy

This is Professional Builder Secrets, the number one podcast to help you grow your building company safely and securely. Brought to you by the association of Professional Builders. Join us every week as we talk to industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and higher margins while improving the building experience for your clients. Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales, processes, financials, operations and marketing. Today I'm joined by co founders sky and Russ Stevens, as well as head coach Andy Scarter for the association of Professional Builders. Welcome everyone. Excited to be speaking to you all today. Hey, Bosco, I'm going to start off with an interesting question. Can builders beat the clock when it comes to time management?

Well, it's interesting because I think we all complain at some point that we don't have enough time, but we've all got the same amount of time, isn't it? We complain we don't have enough time or we don't have enough money. Enough money is a bit subjective, but time is the one thing. It's a level playing field. We do have all the same amount of time, but it all comes down, down to how we spend it. That's what really matters. Now I think we have to acknowledge that builders do have a lot to do, or rather there is a lot to do when it comes to building homes. But I think to be truly successful, you really need to master the art of doing less, not more. And that's not a case of being lazy. It's just a case of focusing on doing leveraged tasks rather than tasks that can be done by others.

What you're really saying is it's more about self management than time management?

Absolutely. I think time management, it really is a mindset, it's a psychological challenge to overcome. So that's really what you really got to focus on rather than the physical tasks themselves and how long they take.

Is time management the most valuable currency for builders today? How would you rank it when it comes to the importance?

Of course, I mean, time is anyone's most valuable resource. I mean, we'll take builders out of this for one second. It's time is one thing that really, if we go very simplistic right now, you can't buy more of it. Like Russ said, it's the most level playing field. Everyone has the same amount of time. But you know, if we go actually a level Deeper, you can buy more of it. And this is why scaling up and buying other people's time in the form of employees and contractors, that's how you can get more out of your day. But, yeah, that's going down really deep.

Now, what do you think are the core reasons that builders struggle with time management? I'm sure this is something that comes up in the coaching calls as well. Is it a common trait to hear?

It is Bosco. And I think I'm going to throw my hat into the ring right now and say to you that I think we're talking about a subject that is impossible. Russ and sky have touched on it already. It is a commodity. It is probably all of our most precious commodity because as we said, you can't buy it, you can't make it. It doesn't matter how rich you are, how good looking you are, how clever you are. Anybody that's worked with me will know the magic number is 168. And 168 relates to the number of hours that you have in a week, every week. So the reality is that for a builder, for any business, but we're talking builders, obviously, specifically, they're going to run their entire lives in that 168 hours. And that means sleep, relationships, physical fitness, health and their business. And that unfortunately, whether they like it or not, the clock is ticking. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, every day. And that's why I'm saying you can't manage it. It has a mind of its own and no matter what you do, it keeps going. So what does that mean? Well, that means as a professional, if you can't manage time, what you have to do is manage focus. And it starts to get into a place of planning and prioritizing the things that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck in that minute or that hour or that morning or that afternoon. So it's really almost the lack of planning that forces builders into being reactive. And because they reactive, they kind of never get anything ever done properly because the next thing hits them before they finish that first thing. So from my perspective, I'm going to come back at it and say if builders, first of all take that mindset change that Russ spoke of and then add to that some strategic planning on a medium to long term basis, that'll allow them to happen to their future instead of their future happening to them. And that puts them in control.

It's really getting them to switch their focus then because they're coming to you with what is the shiny object that's going to make me a better time manager, and you're actually putting it back on them. They might be pleasantly surprised at this point when you go through this with them.

Well, absolutely. And I think the piece that sky has alluded to as well is that when we start to analyze what they spend their life doing, we go looking for the things that they bad at and the things that they hate doing, because those are the things that are automatically going to take them longer, whether they like it or not. So what I always look for is that kind of Venn diagram of if I can get a list of things you hate doing and a list of things that you're bad at wherever they meet, that beautiful little middle section of the Venn diagram. If we can automate, delegate, or eliminate those three things, you are going to get back an incredible amount of time and mental energy and emotional forward movement, because we've got that stuff out of your life. And that is what starts to win them back the time that they need. Keeping in mind everybody that comes into the private mentoring program, we now adding something to their life. They were really busy when they came in, and now we now we're adding some more to that. Our primary job when we start to work with them is to carve out the time they need in order to be able to do the things they need in order to transform their businesses.

This is where it looks all the way back into Russ's point. You got to do less. Make that stop doing list of what is everything, every task, everything that you seem to do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, that you need to stop doing. But we can get into how we can do that maybe a little bit later.

Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating because, you know, I went into this interview thinking about procrastination, but, you know, you use words like automate, delegate, and I'm sitting there going, wow. I didn't even think about it that way. So I guess I'm going to start off with how does a builder become a better time manager? We talked about focus. Let's dig a little bit deeper in here.

Yeah, I always think step one. And again, this probably comes back to mindset to a certain degree. But step one is you've got to place a value on your own time. You've got to understand that value, what your time is worth. And we have a very good calculator for that, which has helped a lot of builders to calculate their own hourly rate. And I think we'll probably put that in the show notes as well, but understanding the value of your own time really does help with starting to master time. Because once you've got that figure, you can then use the DAD process, the delete, automate, delegate process, to start taking stuff off of your plate. And it's amazing just how many tasks we do, the things that we do out of habit, maybe out of comfort to a large extent as well, that we do that we don't really need to be doing anymore. Because first of all, they don't need to be done by anyone. They can be deleted. This happens a lot in software automation that we set up as well. Processes become redundant. So it's always good to be objective and ask yourself, first of all, do I need to be doing this? Does anyone need to be doing this? Does it need to be done? Because there's a lot of stuff that can be simply deleted. The company grows and yeah, simply outgrows those tasks. But if the answer to that question is no, it needs to be, it still needs to be done, then the next question to ask yourself is, well, can it be automated? How can we automate this so it doesn't impact anyone's time? And if it needs to be done but it can't be automated, then the only option left is to delegate it. And this is where it helps to understand the value of your own time. Because you will find that most of the stuff that you're doing can be done by someone else at a lower hourly rate. And there's nothing lazy or wrong with that. That is simply part of business. That's part of growing a business. You have to be able to do it. And I love what Andy was saying earlier as well. Focus on the stuff that you enjoy doing. That's another great part of this process. Look at the stuff that you really don't like doing. I like to do this at the end of every day. If I'm going for a patch where I feel I'm getting a bit bogged down and I don't have a lot of time. At the end of every day, I'll look back on the day, what didn't I enjoy? Let's get rid of that, make work a bit more enjoyable. Now, it's not always possible to offload those tasks we don't like, but we can certainly be working towards that process.

And I think, Russ, you raised a word there that is critical and that's the word comfort. We all kind of regress back to the things that we comfortable to do. And the reality is, if we're not honest with ourselves, Those aren't always the thing that is most necessary now to move my business to the next level. So, you know, it's one of those things that we're always going to gravitate back to what's easy for us, and we've got to be able to plan what we're doing in such a way that we're not doing what's easy, we're doing what's expedient now, and that will then start to give us back that time we're looking for.

Yeah, I think we see this a lot in coaching, don't we? When we explain a concept and a system and a process and solve a problem in a building company, the next step is to move forward and there's a problem elsewhere. But we do find in a lot of instances, the business owner, they find comfort in what they've just achieved and they want to go back and do more of it, and we've got to guide them forward solving new problems. But, yeah, it's just that comfort zone.

I had a discussion today with one of our clients where he's desperately holding on to nine different spreadsheets that we've replaced with one. But he built them and he loves them, and they're the colors he wants in the sequence that he wants. And, you know, it's like the baby with the soiled. Whichever part of the world you're in, diaper or nappy, you know, it's mine and it's warm and I'm going to defend it.

You know, I can so identify with that emotional attachment. Nothing can be as good as you produce yourself.

Absolutely.

Andy, you're full of visuals today. But I'm going to start off with a question about techniques. I learned about the Pomodoro technique, which is about prioritizing and time blocking. What can builders do from a technique perspective with their teams or their colleagues and people that work with them? What can they do on a business level as well to become effective time managers to run their business? Today we talked about the delete and the automation and the delegation. What are some other techniques that you guys inspire your builders to apply?

Well, I'm happy to dive in on here on this one. So obviously there's Delete, Automate, Delegate, which we very affectionately call dad dad. So there's. That process in itself just has to be constant because it's not just a one workshop that you can do. You constantly have to be reviewing it. And by the way, you should be reviewing it with your entire team, because whether you have a small building company, Maybe it is just yourself or maybe a couple people at the moment. As soon as you are a leader and leading other people, you effectively are running other resources and you are running other people's time. Really, to a large extent, everyone's adults, they should, can and will be managing their own time, but you are there as their leader to actually enhance it and get them to get the most out of their day. So you regularly want to do a triage, so to speak, on their time and get them to do very simple things. Like we, we teach a strategy of doing a time audit. So you get to write down exactly what it is you are doing in increments of the day as you change task, how long did you spend on it, what were you doing? Because really, I mean this is what we even do internally here. If we hear someone is really bogged down and you know they feel really behind, they just feel like they don't have any more capacity, that there's just too much. Everyone knows the first thing we're going to say, it's straight away, okay, time audit. Yep, I've already started. So they start doing a time audit, they start writing down every single activity they are doing and what they're switching between. It's so insightful because we tend to look at it on a two week basis because there's lots of regular work. But especially depending where the team member is or even where you are, like what your role is, you'll be working on some quite big projects versus some very regular work. And it's so revealing. When you look at this time audit from a two week period, you're able to immediately see, well, why are you doing that? Or why is that taking so long? I didn't know your admin in the mornings was taking 90 minutes. You know this should be a quick, you're checking the social media and replying and engaging. That really is like a 15 minute job. What's blowing out to 90 minutes? Well, this is happening. There are problems over here or I tend to get distracted because this happens. So if you can start writing all that down, you get immediately this long list of information in front of you and then that is when you get to do the D a day. And just like Russ said, we start with delete because you want to go in zero based thinking, hey, is that even necessary? Does that actually need to get done? If it doesn't, delete it and move on. If it does, the next question is, okay, can we automate it? Because why would we go to the expense and the Time expense as well of delegating it to someone, training someone else to do it, finding that other person and paying them to do it when you know what if I get a very cool software that saves me employing someone to manage people's or clients selections. You know, you can get a very advanced project management software that has a client portal that they can log in and do all of their selections. We've literally heard this from daughters all the time. It replaces employing someone and you know what? They were able to use that money to employ someone else for a role that couldn't be automated. It's why we need software. It's like a CRM system. We've said this before. It's that salesperson that doesn't go sick, doesn't go on holidays. They're working 24 7. So it's very strategic. Why it's in that order. So if you know what, it can't be delegated. Okay, move on. Can it be automated now? If it can be automated, great, you're done. Now put that in place. And you know what? If it can't, that's when you go to delegate. But that delegate, that is your last option. You're trying everything else first.

I think another good tip for builders because they're always looking to make time to work on their business rather than being stuck working in it is a technique that we've used successfully over the years and that's working in sprints. So when you do your planning, whether it's quarterly or or annual, you end up with your rocks and then you end up with the challenge of how do I execute this? And it's very easy for your time to just slip away from you. But by putting blocks of time in your calendar for what we call sprints and then working in 50 minute blocks or 60 minute blocks on those sprints, that can really help you get through those rocks and those tasks working on the business, which, yeah, will help you work towards mastering time at some point.

There's a great book by, I think it's Cal Newport. It's not Carl. I think it's Cal Newport. It's called Deep Work and actually explains this concept very, very well. Like most books, it's littered with stories to really get the point across. And I definitely recommend picking up a copy or having a listen to it because it actually explains why we need to work in sprints. Like Russ just said, it's not just about getting through 20 different tasks in one day. Because what if you could carve out your day? So maybe you Save a lot of the regular stuff, maybe a lot of the working in the business, that has to get done for certain blocks of the day. But maybe when you're at your freshest in the morning, or maybe that's just after lunch or whenever it is for you, carve out that deep work time that sprint that Russ just explained. And that is how we can be more effective, because you are actually shutting yourself off from every possible interruption. It is a known thing in the team, even in our builders that implement this strategy, that when you're in a sprint, you turn off all notifications, your phone is on silent, not even on vibrate. You know you're turning off every notification. Phone's in another room, shut your office door, put a sign on it, but do not disturb. You are closing down your email, you are closing down everything except for the one thing you are working on. And truly, this is how you can get started working on your building company and get into that deep work and set a timer. This is a really big tip, actually. If you're doing a sprint and say it is 50 minutes, like Russ just said, set a timer, maybe on your phone, that's the one thing in your office. And what you'll notice, it's really interesting in the book he talks about, I think it takes 27 minutes to get into a deep flow of concentration, but it takes one second to break it, and it takes 27 minutes to get back into that state. So you want to get into that state, obviously, as quickly as possible. If you can go and get in there in 27 minutes, wonderful. Because you've not had a single interruption. What you'll find is when that timer goes off at 50 minutes or whatever, you are flowing by that point and you're so enjoying what you're working on because you've made that much progress, you can actually keep going. And it's that compound effect. It just sort of. It does so well for you because you're winning. And we know what it's like when we're winning. We do want to keep going.

Let's talk a little bit about technology, because you're talking about so many different insights here. We're talking about personal assessment, measuring your own personal data. We're talking about sprints. How does technology play a part in this process? What are some of the resources that our builders could potentially apply?

Well, I think it's a how long is a piece of string question, unfortunately, and it's got to be kept in its context. We're talking about, dad, delete, automate delegate, really technology slips into that automate portion of that process. So the reality is we need to be planning, we need to be proactive, not reactive. And if we planning, we can then utilize a variety of different types of technology. The most obvious one is an online calendar, stroke scheduler, whatever you want to call it. But the idea is that we start off with a template of what our ideal week should look like. And literally what that allows us to do is to then prioritize relative to the stuff we've got to get through, what needs to be done first, second, third, fourth. And then what we also recommend people to do is to then schedule those things in their day according to the amount of energy, both physical and mental, that those things require. Now, that might sound like I haven't spoken about technology at all. All I'm saying in this is it's not really going to help me to start rattling off names of different programs that people could buy or software systems they could go to. What I'm really saying here is whatever technology will serve best for you and you can afford if it's going to make you more efficient in that process, that's the technology you want to implement.

There's a great bit of functionality on the project management software that's available now. Software like CodeConnect, for instance, where you can have all your call forwards completely automated, where an email or a text message will go out to subcontractors and get them to confirm that they're going to be on site on a day and then they can respond to that. So imagine how much time that saves supervisors with those outbound calls of an evening and then waiting for the callbacks. It's just incredible just being aware of just all these different things that are coming out now that can leverage up your time.

It's a good point. Rather than focusing on productivity software, which so often is what people are looking for, time management software, productivity software, dump that for a second, try and systemize the things that you're actually working on that's taking up your time. You know, use the dad process there, I think. I loved, I love what you were saying though, Andy. It's protecting your time. And yeah, if there was one, one thing you could implement very, very quickly, an online calendar like a scheduler is what you were saying. People schedule in time with you. They don't just get to call you whenever. Be so stingy with your time because it's your most valuable commodity, like you were saying. So be so stingy, not in so much that you Wouldn't give it to anyone, but just protect it at all costs. So you can send out a calendar link when people talk to me. Absolutely. Let's schedule a meeting. But you have blocks of availability and every time you've blocked in exactly what you were saying, Russ, about making time to work on the building company or do sprints or whatever that's already blocked out as busy in the calendar. No one can talk to you on Mondays 8 till 12 or whatever.

And I mean, we often have a builder who says, look, I just don't have the time. I really wish I could do it, but I just don't have the time. And my response to that is always, if you and I went out for a shrimp dinner last night and we are a long way from the sea and that shrimp had taken a while to get here and in fact, we shouldn't have eaten it at all, but we did. And the natural consequence of that was that we weren't feeling so great this morning. What would you do about the stuff that you'd scheduled between 8 o' clock and 10 o' clock this morning? And the answer is, it just wouldn't happen. I'd have to be taking care of business in other areas because of the bad shrimp that I ate. And what that really says is, it's not that it couldn't happen, it's just you didn't put enough of a priority, that thing. And really, that comes back to what we said earlier about planning and prioritizing what's important and making sure that the main thing remains the main thing and that it gets done first. We have this wonderful process that we institute in our daily huddles where we talk about the rock, the thing for today that must happen to allow me to go home feeling like I've had a successful day. The mental change that happens when you get to tick that thing off, even if that's the only thing you tick off today, it's ticked off and it's done. Setting yourself up for that level of success will give you immense energy in terms of creating that extra time.

I think that idea. I'm going to throw out another book recommendation here. That idea come from that really good book. The one thing I think it's Gary Keller. And basically it's talking about the idea of there's 400 things every builder can name that has to be done. Like everything seems important, right? And everyone has that. You know, I've got this big old list that I need to get through today. And this happens internally in our team and when we're working with builders as well. And the thing is, okay, what is the most important thing for you to get done today, this week, this quarter, whatever. And everyone, as human nature, we rattle out about 20 things. Just challenge yourself to go, okay, what's the most important of that list? And then the most important, because usually, and you always can boil it down to the one most important thing. And if you achieve that one thing today, you know that today was successful because you got to be able to find your wins every day. Otherwise it just gets very demoralizing. So boil it down to that one thing of the one thing. Great book. Would highly recommend it.

And I think just to pick up on that, there's two things that jump to mind when we talk about technology. I don't know whether Russ and Sky even know this, but I was one of South Africa's first ever facsimile salespeople. In fact, Skye probably doesn't know what a fax machine even is. She's not old enough. In fact, you probably don't know what a fax machine is either.

But I actually do.

When they were first released, they probably weighed about 40 kilograms, so 100 pounds. And they were a fairly hefty piece of equipment.

Tell me you went door to door.

I pretty much went door to door. And I'm 90% certain that they employed me not because of my selling skills, but because I can carry heavy things. That's. I think I got the job. But I remember saying this to people. This is going to save you an immense amount of time. The fact that you've got this technology in your office is going to win you back hours every week. And if I think back since the day of the fax machine, virtually every iteration of technology has been to save us time. Well, by my calculation, we should now be working two days a week and having five day weekends if all of that technology had actually worked. But the secret is it will work if we've done the planning and the prioritization beforehand so that it gets properly applied. And that, I think is really part of the key here is not. Sky summed it up beautifully. Going and looking for time management software. Most builders that I know end up complaining that it takes them longer to implement the time management software than what they had available in the first place. So get the planning done and then go from there to the next level.

Also to piggyback on something you just said, though, because builders do say this to us all the time. I don't have time. I just don't have time right now. It's an excuse we tell ourselves, it's an excuse we use when we don't achieve what we should have achieved. But it's. But actually think about it like this. When you say to yourself that you don't have time, or you genuinely believe that it's just the wrong time of year for you, or it's just a particularly busy period, I don't have time, I'm too busy. When will you. Because if you genuinely think it's going to get easier without you changing anything, not much can be done, unfortunately. So actually, be super honest with yourself. When are you genuinely thinking you're going to have more time? Because think back to all the times you've said this in the past. It doesn't happen that way. We have to actually carve out our time to put systems in place, to work on the company, to work in sprints, to use dad to do time audits, to improve things, to get more time and free up more time for ourselves.

There's an old saying that success leaves blueprints. And at the end of the day, I think you've created all this transformation for all these different builders from different parts of the world. Is there a common blueprint? What is a successful builder doing today to stay on top of their schedule and create this prioritization?

Well, they're definitely utilizing software such as the project management software, CRM software, calendar, booking, et cetera, all the things that we've mentioned. So they're definitely utilizing all those tools that are available to them, but they're also protecting their time by building strong teams. Now, probably one of the most common objections I think we hear from builders to making change is the belief and the thought pattern that it's just too hard to train other people to do what I'm doing. It's quicker to just do it myself. And if you have that mindset, that way of thinking, then you are going to be trapped on the hamster wheel forever. Sure, no one will do anything as good as you, or in some cases, and they won't do it as fast as you, for sure, because you are the owner of the company. They won't have your drive and passion. However, it's a big mistake to think that no one else can do this task, because the reality is they can. And even if they only do it 80% as good and 80% as fast, that's good enough. And that frees up your time to focus on doing other things, more leverage tasks. So it's a really important mindset to have. And that's what we see the successful guys having, is that mindset that they will delegate. There are other people that can, that can do what they do. And the reality is we are all replaceable. Everything we do can be done by someone else in some form. But I think another thing that, that really separates successful builders and really does help them to stay in control of their time is just finding some time, some breathing space to consider a request for their time. So, I mean, how many times it happened, where can I meet with you tomorrow? Or whatever. The knee jerk reaction is always, yes. Builders are helpful. They're accommodating, they're there to support their team, to provide great service to consumers. And it's always a knee jerk reaction to say yes. But just buy yourself some time, take a moment to consider the request. Is this meeting necessary? Is it going to be a good use of their time? Because if you automatically respond with a yes to every request for your time, you're going to spend it very, very quickly.

And I think that leads into the automatic discussion of opportunity cost. Value your time enough to make sure that what you give to something is the best thing you could be doing with that time. Because despite what all of our wives tell us, nobody can multitask. That has now been scientifically proven. I've checked it. So what does that mean? The brain can only focus on one thing at a time. What most of us think about as multitasking is our brain's ability to flick from subject to subject very, very quickly. But the truth is it's only dealing with one thing at one time. And if you are dealing with one thing, you're not dealing with anything else. So it comes back to making sure that we value our time enough that we're giving it to the most important thing we could be doing right now.

But also I think if that request for your time is valid and you're thinking, yeah, I do want to help you with this, or that is actually a very important thing you're asking questions on. You can even run it through another version of dad. So you're trying to get rid of it, right? Delete it? Is it even necessary? No. Automate it. Could they just look this up? Could they google it? Could they go into your manuals? Could they like your sales manual, your company manual, whatever? Could they go into the software tutorial videos that the software company provide? If not, delegate. Can someone else on the team help them with this? Who else can do that meeting? So yeah, taking that moment to consider it, run through Another version of dad on literally everything.

I love that. That's. Yeah, just another part of the process, isn't it? A request for your time. You run through the dad process and you buy yourself time. But I love what you say. You were saying as well, Andy, about the opportunity cost. This gets so overlooked, doesn't it? And the more time we spend in our comfort zone doing these tasks, these unleveraged tasks, we might be confident in the fact that we're busy, but the opportunity cost is huge. Yeah, we've got to be pushing the boundaries, challenging ourselves and working on things that are not in our comfort zone. That's where growth comes from.

There's two words there. One, that four letter word busy. Busy doesn't help you as a builder. You need to be effective. There's a huge difference between occupying your time and doing something that makes a difference. So that's critically important. And I just think we've kind of got to get to a place where we understand that, that every single thing we do, that time is gone forever. We don't get it back. It's not that the clock resets and we start again tomorrow. Yesterday's gone. There's nothing we can do about it. We've literally got to be making sure that everything we're doing is the most important thing we could be doing right now.

Yeah, I love it. I mean, too many of us, we kind of use the word busy as a badge of honor and it's not. We need to change the way we look at this. Remember that story about the little kid who said to his mother, is Daddy going to get fired? And she said, no, no, Daddy's working hard and that's why he's always home late. And he suggests, but is he going to get fired because he can't get all his work done on time each day?

Oh, there it is.

Tell you what, speaking of children, if you're actually looking for a strategy, we at a very high level were analyzing some of our most successful clients and even some of the most successful business people out there. And I tell you what, they all have in common. They've got a lot of children. So I think that's how you can ultimately master time management. If you put all that together, as there's something about was by force, you have to get good at time management. And obviously I'm being a bit facetious here, but it's, it's quite interesting to actually see a trend.

I think they're just showing off, aren't they? Seven years in the multinational company feels like it.

To go back to Bosco's question about technology. I still believe that Foxtel is the absolute best contraceptive method Australia's ever created. There's some technology you can use.

I feel like that's another podcast episode on its own. Look, tell me a little bit about obstacles and the mindset of a builder. They come to you, they've got all these challenges. You've now opened their eyes out to assessing what they're doing. What are some of these mindset obstacles that they have to really overcome to become more effective?

I'd be harsh. I think honestly, a lot of it is like ourselves or yourselves or how we can position that. To be honest, a lot of it is just excuses. This whole excuse of I don't have the time or I'm just too busy for that. We were just talking about it's not a badge of honor. So they're just excuses we tell ourselves. And you know what, when we're selling and we're trying to get prospects over the line into a contract or prelims or anything, we get annoyed with their excuses. We get annoyed when they procrastinate. We get very frustrated when they fob us off. But often we're doing that to ourselves every time we say we're too busy. You know what, I'm going to start working on my business next year when I have more time, or next month or next week even. They're just lies we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about why we're not doing something right now. So it's very, very harsh. Probably not where you wanted me to go, Bosco, but genuinely, I think it's ourselves just. We got to get out of our own way. Just. Just be relentless with yourself and just. We need to aspire for more. So hold our. Hold ourselves to a higher account. Is that the word? I'm looking for a higher standard.

I think it takes a lot of courage to look in the mirror and assess yourself and go, these are the excuses and the lies that I need to part way with to become more effective as well.

Sky, look, it really does. And this is why a lot of our. Well in private mentoring. So our private accountability program is. It's a lot to do with mindset and actually helping the person. Because, I mean, we've got systems for days. I mean, they're all plug and play. They're ready to deploy. That's the easy part. It's actually dealing with the human in front of you or the human looking back at you in the mirror and Getting them to work and getting them to build those habits and good behavior patterns that you're looking for.

And I think just to add to that, Russ and Sky have been very, very kind about somebody can do something 80% as well as you can or whatever. Sometimes it takes us admitting that somebody can do something 120% better than I can and acknowledging that. And that healthy dose of self reality and self assessment, I guess often will show you exactly where the areas are that you could eliminate, delegate, automate, and then that obviously wins you back the time. The other thing that I think is critical for us to remember here is that a lot of builders start early in the morning, work all day on site, come home, get a fleeting amount of time with their families, and then work on the administrative side of the business later. One of the major reasons to get back time is to get back that work, life balance, and literally be a present husband, be a present father, present mother. Let's actually get this thing called life back in balance so that work sits in its true place and it serves the rest of our lives rather than being our lives.

It ends up being a joke, hasn't it? You've seen it online. It's like, you know, I didn't want to be stuck working 9 to 5 for someone else, so I started my own company and now work 24 7. It's, it's, it's, it's become the butt of a joke. But again, that's not a badge of honor. That's not a good thing. Not at all.

Don't boast about it. It's not something to brag about.

It's definitely the wrong price tag. You talked about coaching and creating transformation as well. Can you share a story about a builder that's completely transformed their business through the coaching and some of the tools and assessments that you've given them to really have an effective time management system?

How long have you got? But I mean, the most recent example that I can think of is wonderfully prickly in that it was one of those coaching sessions where a client that I get on with, I think very well, very serious to start off the conversation. How are you doing? I'm fine. I need to talk to you about something. And I said, okay, what? And he said, I have to cancel my private mentoring program. And I said, oh, wow, what's happened? I just don't have the time. I'm not getting to it. And as he said those words to me, I said to him, so just stop for one second. You want to cancel the thing that you're not doing to get back some time. And he literally sat there like a deer in headlights. And he went, oh, yeah, that doesn't make sense, does it? I said, no, it doesn't make any sense at all. Let's get to the real root of this problem. And it literally came back to us restructuring. We're back to planning. We sat down and I said to him, if you could wave a magic wand and you could set up your week to be exactly the way you wanted it to be, what would it look like? And he said, oh, on a Monday, I'd go to site from this time to that time and then I'd do this and I'd work on my quotes on a Tuesday afternoon. And I said, right, well, when are you going to work on the stuff that you need to be doing through me on the business? I'll do that on Wednesdays and Fridays between 11 and 1. And literally in the space of 25 minutes, we built a matrix for him that gave him the ideal week. Now, did it work perfectly the first week? No, it probably only worked 60% as well as we wanted it to. But week two, it went to 70, and week three, it went to 80. And when I saw him a month later, he was literally a different human being. There was a brightness and a lightness about him. He just said, I cannot believe the difference it has made for me to be in control of my life rather than having my life running me. Now, I'm not going to embarrass him by mentioning his name or the name of his company, but it does rhyme with. With both floor builders. So there you go. Somebody will be able to work that out cryptically. But Bosco, really, I could literally go on for an hour. There's probably 25 this year where that has been the outcome of getting this part of their lives sorted out.

Amazing. Amazing. Any final words of wisdom from any of you in regards to this topic? It's a passionate topic by the sounds of it all. If you really have brought in so many different insights and personal passions around this. But any parting wise words from any of you?

I'm so glad you asked. I really have been dying for you to ask that question. Two nuggets for me. One I learned at the apb, one I was taught in, I think my second day when I came to the apb. Don't look at your email first thing in the morning. That's number one. Like, literally. Again, back to planning. Set aside times in the day where you'll go and deal with email, but do not do it first thing in the morning. That's number one. And then number two, just to lift the pressure off everybody listening. Nobody doesn't matter who it is, not even the guy that wrote the book on time management. Nobody gets through their to do list. It's not possible. You will never, ever finish your to do list. Take that pressure off yourself today and just do the things that are important.

Wise words. Wise words, Rusty Sky.

For me it was something that was touched on earlier and that's whenever you take something on, something has to be removed from your plate. And I can remember this being spelled out to us by one of our earliest coaches whenever we talked about a new idea and this we're going to do. He said, that's great. So what are you going to remove from your plate? And it was so common sense, it was so logical and sensible and, and it really got us to think all the time. It's very easy, I think to fall into the trap of just doing more and more. We get excited these ideas but to then think objectively about what you're doing and remove something that keeps you balanced.

Love that. And I would probably just add planning. The more you can have a structure in place, the more freedom you actually get. Even some of our top clients, when they plan, like some of our most successful builders, you look at their weekly plan, they schedule in family time, they schedule in their dates, they schedule in all the business stuff. But you schedule your personal life as well. So you actually get the most out of that because you feel like you don't have any balance by the time you finished work. And then it's just okay, we've got a few hours to do whatever and you're not actually making the most of it. So schedule all of that. But if I go at a level deeper on planning, there are two kinds of planning. You need your long term, which is what Angie was talking about earlier. So you need your, your strategic plan of really like where you're actually going so that you know where you're going to be in three years, in one year and in 90 days time. That's your long term planning. But then don't forget all of your short term and I mean really short term, I mean every single day, getting in, looking at the plan, what has been scheduled and then how you best going to optimize your day for your energy. I think you got to look at both to make it super successful. But I think just to echo what you said, Andy, this, it's a, a constant work in progress. This is never done. This is a topic that we could just talk about forever because it's just. It's just repetition and it's something that you just need to keep going back on so often.

It's like being a surgeon, isn't it? You never master it. You just practice.

Exactly.

I'd like you to be a master if I'm being operated on, if I have to be a master. But I think you've brought up some really good thought processes here and a reminder that we need to use time as a tool and not as an excuse. So with that, I want to thank all three of you for your time and energy today as well, and look forward to another edition of another insightful talk with you in the near future.

Thanks so much.

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