87. Managing Stress With Russ, Sky & Andy

A lot of people, I think, mistake pressure for stress, as in they can actually handle what's in front of them. It's just a question of working through it logically, et cetera, et cetera. The danger, though, is when they can't and they don't acknowledge that upfront, that's when it starts to become extremely dangerous and very detrimental to them on multiple levels.

Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, a podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by the co founders of the association of Professional Builders, Russ Stevens and Sky Colliday and Andy Scarda, the head coach of apb. Welcome to the show, everyone.

Thanks, Will.

Good to be here.

Today we're talking about managing stress in building companies, which is a huge topic, so really interested to get stuck in.

But.

But Andy, do you want to start off by telling me what your definition of stress is?

Sure, it's getting the first question on a podcast, but no, seriously, for me, it's always going to be that level of requirement that I can't handle. I'm one of those people that honestly believes that we live a little bit like an elastic band. If we're not under pressure, we're useless. If you looked at an elastic band, if it's not being stretched, it's. It's kind of doing nothing. So I always say that there's a place where we're under pressure which is good, it's positive, it stretches us, makes us better people, and then we get to the point that it's beyond what we can handle. And from my perspective, stress is always going to be that point at which we can no longer handle what needs to be done. And obviously that's going to be different for everybody. We're all made differently. And of course that means that level is going to be different depending on.

Who you are and you're working with builders every day. So how do they interpret what stress is? Or does it just come out in what you observe?

Well, I think it's. Again, there's going to be different situations with different people. A lot of people, I think, mistake pressure for stress, as in they can actually handle what's in front of them. It's just a question of working through it logically, etc. Etc. The danger, though, is when they can't and, and they don't acknowledge that upfront. That's when it starts to become extremely dangerous and very detrimental to them on multiple levels.

Interesting. Sky, do you have a different definition of stress or Well, I think everyone.

Interprets stress or maybe it manifests differently in everybody because I think stress in itself, it's an emotion. This is what you feel. But it can be caused from maybe a complete sense of overwhelm, maybe a sense that you're completely out of your depth. But it can manifest in any one of us in so many different ways. It can manifest physically and we can get really ill. It can manifest in our relationships. It can manifest in how we then make decisions for the future of our building company or our families. And so I think managing stress is about looking at first and foremost what is causing you a lot of stress and stress in itself. As we've talked about this in APB for a while, stress is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Stress is. It's like your emotions behind it. Like what's causing you to be stressed is what you need to look for, what is the root cause of this? And then if you can go after the root cause of the problem, like this big problem, if you can focus on solving that, that's how you can then alleviate your stress. But it can manifest in so many different ways in a person, from your health to your attitude to your words, that that's where it can then ripple and then you can actually cause a lot more problems in your life and your own business because of how you've hand. Does that make sense?

Yeah, but it doesn't sound like it's easy to necessarily know when you are stressed all the time. So how do you, how do you uncover like the reason behind being stressed?

I think everyone knows when they feel stressed because they don't feel themselves. Maybe they don't feel, I suppose, as they should in their day to day, like how they should feel calm and at peace. So you know when you feel a little bit on edge and you know when you do that like mental check. Okay, what could be making me feel so sick right now or what could be making me feel so uneasy? You know, when you go through that mental. Mental check of. Is it this is it that. Is it that you know when you land on something and then something just happens inside you, Your body can tell when you know what it is. Have you guys had that?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And I mean, just to add to what sky was saying, I think. I think most of us will start to see actual physical signs of stress. You know, it's going to manifest in that tightness in your shoulders and your neck. You're not sleeping so well. You're either eating because you're stressed. Or you're not eating because you're stressed, you know, there's going to be those physical indications that all is not well. And as I say, the problem with a lot of people is they don't respond to that. They try and ignore it or pretend it's not there, and that's when it becomes a real issue.

That's huge. When a lot of people have that feeling of stress and people choose to ignore it or just go along with like, I'm completely fine, it's fine. But it's the symptoms of your stress that make you unable to ignore it after a certain amount of time.

Russ, you're being very quiet there. I feel like we need to bring you into.

Oh, I didn't want to interrupt. I'll speak when I'm spoken to.

Let's jump into what causes stress for building company owners.

Well, I think. I mean, to me, stress is. It's an overwhelm of the senses. I mean, my computers have been getting stressed for years. They're coping with it a lot better now as the RAM expands. But when there's just too much going on, that's what kind of forces you to grind to a ho. Just like a computer, it can't cope with all these requests and messages going on and it just shuts down. And that's very similar to how we react as humans. And. And especially for builders that have so much to contend with.

And.

And it just. It escalates quite quickly when you get an issue like cash flow challenges, for instance, all of a sudden you're having to cope with so much because you're chasing people up for money, you're chasing the banks up for money. That's taking time. At the same time, you're getting pressured from suppliers and subcontractors calling you, so you're having to fend off those calls. So now you're dealing with two lots of unproductive tasks that have taken away from more productive stuff. So you're spinning more and more plates and it can spir downwards very, very quickly. Yeah. What we've seen with builders over the last couple of years as well, with. In terms of supply issues, that has meant that they have had to constantly reschedule their jobs. And again, this is additional work that is taking time out their day. It's taking time away from more productive stuff, and it means they're spinning more and more plates and all that. It just leads to this massive overwhelm where. Where in the end, you feel like you just can't focus on any one thing, and you become completely unproductive. So it's. I think the most important thing is to be aware when you kind of see this happening and you don't allow it to get to that stage, because when you get to that point where you just can't cope and focus, it's almost too late. That's when you need outside help to get back on the right path.

And I think we'll just to kind of dive into the. Let's call it the technical aspect of your question. Most builders end up facing two sources of stress. There's what I would call an internal and an external. And the real difficulty that most people have at the moment is that we have no control over those external factors. So, you know, interest rates going up, pandemic, you know, those kind of things literally are completely outside of the control of. Of any of us, but in particular outside of builders. And as Russ has said in the last couple of years, the builders have really been the meat in the sandwich. They're getting. They're getting scrunched from every angle, and probably 80 to 90% of it is not their own doing. It's external things over which they have no control.

Yeah.

And I think as well as business owners, as leaders in the industry as well, there's. There's kind of an expectation that builders put on themselves that they're expected to have all the answers. They shouldn't be feeling this way. They shouldn't be unproductive. And that just makes it harder as well. I think we have to accept our limitations as human beings. It's normal. We can't cope with all these requests going on to our brain. So it's perfectly understandable and acceptable. So it's okay to look for help when we're feeling like this.

Andy, I was just interested to hear him further about. You were talking about external factors causing stress which you can't control. Is that an easy out, though, just to say that something else is causing the stress, to accept it rather than taking ownership?

Absolutely not. You can't take ownership of something that you have no control over. And I think that's one of the really important things when it comes to this subject, is to accept that some things are outside of your control. And for you to load yourself up in terms of trying to solve something that you've had no part in creating is. Is literally you are now adding unnecessary stress to the situation because there's absolutely nothing you can do about the actual situation. Now, let me just balance that by saying some of those things have an implication into your business, and you can control the way you react to them. But the difficulty is that when people take on the ownership of the problem and it's unsolvable from their perspective, they are literally setting themselves up to fail, which is. Which is a very dangerous place to be. And, you know, I say this to people often. We. We mustn't lose sight of the fact that a lot of builders never intended to be business owners. They almost become business owners by accident. And because of that, in a lot of cases, they get faced with things that they are quite simply unable to deal with because they've never been taught how to deal with those things. So it's a complex situation that we're talking about here, internal and external.

But that in itself is stressful, isn't it? You're forced into something or you go into it by accident, and now you have all of this responsibility and all of this pressure. That is an extremely stressful career that you've fallen into, and then you've got all of these forces just on your shoulders.

Yeah.

I mean, most builders get into the industry because they want to build beautiful homes. That's. That's why they get in. And the next thing, when they look around, they've got 10 people working for them, and they've got to be doing marketing and selling and all of these other things. That was never, ever part of the plan. The plan was hammer, nail, tool, belt, saw, sunshine, pie and chips at lunchtime. That. That was the plan. And all of a sudden, I'm a business owner. You know, that's stressful.

And I think it's. Why isn't it? You hear so many guys saying, I'm doing way better just doing six homes a year when they used to do 24. They kind of. They grow to this point where it becomes too stressful and they can't cope, and they wind it back down. They say, yeah, it's much more profitable. Well, in that instance, it probably is, but it shouldn't be. You know, you can have it both. I mean, you. You literally, you can scale your way out of having to do everything yourself. It, you know, is the only way to stop doing everything yourself is to scale the building company. But if you don't do it in a systemized way, you will end up stressed out.

That's interesting, Russ. I feel like that it is like almost human nature to want to contract when you're feeling stress. Is that what you're getting to there?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's. It's a human instinct and it's sometimes it's not a bad thing because, you know, if we grow a business fast, then sometimes we have to just take a step back. And because we haven't built the systems before we grow, that's fundamentally what's gone wrong. And if we're in a situation where we can't build those systems with the business at the size it is, it's not a bad thing to pull it back. Just take a step back and a breath. But the danger I see is where the mindset sets in that, no, this is better, I'm doing way better. And then those guys are never going to grow again. And that's a shame. It's a missed opportunity because you can have it all.

So, Sky, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the implications for the building company if stress gets out of control for the owner.

Well, I actually want to piggyback on what Russ was saying, because you can contract right, if you're so stressed and you just want to go backward, you want to scale down, you want to make it a lot simpler, it can affect your mindset and really your goals, and you just accept a new standard for your life like, this is the way it needs to be, and you can go all the way back and wind it back. Bottom line, though, is even to do means taking action and making change. So that requires effort and energy anyway. So why wouldn't we just channel our effort and energy into solving the root cause of the problem that's causing a lot of our stress? And most likely it's because we've been growing and growing and we're like bursting at the seams. And you can just feel like you're getting pulled in all these different directions. We could just focus on putting in place systems and solutions to handle that, but if we don't, instead, we start putting in a lot more effort and scaling all the way back. The problem is what can happen while you're feeling stressed. It's not even once you take action and decide to either scale back or decide to fix the problem. What's happening at the minute when you're feeling stressed and pulled in all these different directions is probably even worse because mistakes are happening left, right, and center mistakes on site or in the office. Your team are not performing as well as they could be or should be. There could be awful mistakes getting made that your clients are noticing, and then that in turn actually affects your reputation and your whole brand. Like, it can have a really awful snowball effect. And this is what, unfortunately can compound somebody's decision to just completely revert and go all the way back to where they began and where they started and just make it much, much easier company for themselves. But in that, in that way as well, if you look at what's happened in the last several years, even with forces out of somebody's or a builder's control, what's been affecting them and affecting the whole industry, it's actually made a lot of people so disgruntled with the industry, they just want to leave altogether. They've reached that burnout point. And I, and Andy, I know you said this, that you can't control external forces. Like, why put all your time and energy into things you can't control? The thing is, though, we need to, okay, what can we control? We can control how we react to it. And unfortunately, if we don't put those measures in place, we get that burnout and you get that. You know what? I just want to leave the industry. I'm totally done.

Yeah, yeah. And I think burnout is a. Is a big concern and something we've got to be aware of. I think in the state of the residential construction industry survey in 2022, which, you know, is the data used in the 2023 report, burnout was affecting something like for builders in terms of their mental health had deteriorated. That's a big concern because when you asked about the implications, Will. And the implications are that deteriorating mental health is going to lead to depression, which I always classify depression as a failure to see a future. Whenever I talk to depressed people, it's because they cannot clearly see a future. And that's when you get depressed because you start feeling like, what's the point? So, yeah, that, that is the, the big concern. And that's why I think it's something that has to be addressed. Because if we allow stress to continue, it's. It's only going to get worse and lead to other things. Yeah.

And the, the practical outworking of this will. I'll give you some, some real life examples. In the last year, I've had two clients. And you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you, but I've had two builders who closed down their building businesses and went to work for their wives. Now think about the implications of that. I mean, essentially, and I'm saying that tongue in cheek, obviously, but the point I'm making is everything sky said leads to a place where eventually they just go, that's it, I'm out. The other interesting situation I had recently was one of my Clients came to a coaching session. Very down. I could see very, very dark clouds. And I said, what's up? And he said, I need to, I need to cancel my mentoring program. And I said, why? He said, because I'm closing down my company. And I said, okay, I know that you've got seven jobs running at the moment. That's going to take two years. And he kind of stopped and looked at me and went, ah. And I think this is another area of stress that builders face, is that this is not a business that you can just close the door, put the lights off and walk away. The builders end up feeling trapped. Now, in his case, it ended up with a silver lining because I said to him, okay, well then I don't think you should cancel your mentoring program. You should stay in the program and I'll coach you through your exit strategy. And that of course gave him exactly as Russ has just said, that gave him hope that let's put together an actual strategy to get you out of this situation in the best way possible. And what's starting to happen now is as he's working through the things that he needs to do to exit, we're fixing the problems and the stress is going away. It's amazing.

It's a, it's a very easy business to get into, isn't it, building. But once you're in, like you say, Andy, it's, it's very hard to get out of. And that obviously then can lead to, you know, stress and even depression because that feeling of, of trapped and, and you just can't exit especially. Yeah, like you say in this instance where it was a two year exit, but y. That, that two years, probably the saving grace as well, wasn't it? Because you've been able to work with the builder, show them the solutions I need to fix urgently in order to exit. Which has probably then led to a different mindset.

But it's not just the company that's difficult to exit or that you're feeling trapped in and that you can't exit quickly. It actually ropes in everyone in that builder's family. Even if your spouse isn't involved at the business level in your, your building company, what your building company and your level of stress in your own business can actually influence. It just ripples into the rest of your personal lives, your relationships and you know, you see this all the time. A lot of general businesses and general business coaches, they talk about, you know, you've got to prioritize your business and then your wealth and then your family relationships. But this industry causes so much stress. And when you can then feel that feeling of being trapped, how do you think your family feels about you being in that situation? Seeing you that stressed all the time, you take that baggage home. You, you know, depending how you handle stress as well, and we've not even gotten into how you can handle your stress, but depending how you handle it, if you don't have any coping mechanisms or any strategies in place, you can inadvertently take all that stress out onto your relationships, your family, your, you know, your second part of your world, really. And then you're even more stressed. And it's this vicious cycle because. Because it's just going round and round and round and it's feeding into the business and then feeding into your personal life.

Well, stress is almost contagious in that, in that instance as well. Like you're probably taking it and passing it on to your family and your friends.

Well, exactly. And then you just get in your mentality of, well, this has caused it. And then I think you can go really laser focused on, well, it all started from, you know, this company or this business. I can't stand it anymore, I need to get out. And then it just fuels that fire even more. But if you can instead work on, okay, how can we better manage stress? Life is stressful. And I think that's worth really clearly putting down in this whole episode. Life is stressful. The grass is not always greener. You can think, okay, I would rather not run an entire building company and have all this weight of responsibility on my shoulders. I'd rather go work for somebody else. Life is so stressful, whether it's what's happening in the economy, whether it's what's happening in your family, there are going to be so many stressors that come into your life. So we have to, at a baseline, learn how to handle stress better. And, and if we want to be a leader in our building companies, we can mentor and help other people on our team as well. Because every single one, every single person on your team has life stressors, too. It's not just about you and your building company. And I know it can feel like that when you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders. But every single person has their own thing, their own things going on, which is a huge realization because it almost just helps you zoom out a little bit and realize, okay, it's not just you experiencing this. And I think that's what's really important about community. And I know we're going to get into solutions a little bit later. But that's a huge reason you should look to and surround yourself with a community because it helps you realize, you know what, you're actually not alone. Everyone has gone through this at some point and it's about what did they do, how did they get through it? And how can you lean on other people and connect with other people and understand and absorb that information from them?

Andy, are there any mistakes that building company owners are making which is contributing to their stress? Is it the fact that they don't fully understand what it is or how to deal with it?

That's a valid point. But you know, the reality is people that are in that don't know what they don't know phase are not really going to be stressed by the things that they're unaware of, as sky has so correctly pointed out. I think there's enough things that are very clearly discernible in most builders lives that that will cause stress. So it's, you know, when we, when we talk about are they making mistakes? One of the frustrations that the coaching team here at the APB often feels is that builders wait too long before asking for help. And you know, I just think generally with this thing we, you know, we've been talking about mental health at the APB for probably two years now. And really I can remember when we first started this conversation, what we found was the fundamental problem in the industry was that people don't talk about it. And, and you know, we're going to be talking about solutions, as sky said. Well, we said, okay, then we better start talking about it because if we can actually get people to open up and just have those open conversations, build those relationships, put themselves in situations where they're not isolated because it's that isolation, I think that really causes the problem. Problem. When you think you are the only one dealing with this situation, that's when that spiral starts and, and you don't want to end up there. So if you, if you're going to kind of hold me to the is there a mistake that I would raise, it's, yeah, get help sooner rather than later. Don't, don't wait until it's unsolvable.

And going back to what you're saying earlier as well, Andy, that, you know, you can't be stressed when you don't know what you don't know. And yeah, I think there's an argument as well that over the last couple of years, a lot of builders, maybe not so much to the back end of last year, but going back before that 20, 20, 2021 early part of 22. I would argue that builders were not stressed enough. I would probably argue that we were getting a lot more stressed than our clients because we felt they should be a lot more concerned about the future than they actually were. So, yeah, maybe an argument that there's not enough stress at some points for some people at certain points in time, but that's because I guess we could see what was coming on the horizon. And it stressed us that we weren't seeing the reaction in a lot of people that we'd like to have seen.

I think everyone has a different threshold for stress, though. Everyone's got a different pain threshold. Everyone's got a different stress threshold. So some people can actually tolerate a heck of a lot more stress than other people. But some people are. We've all seen it, right? You have, like, super sensitive people that if one thing goes wrong, it just derails their whole plan, and they literally cannot focus and get back on track for the day. Then you have some people who are so happy go, lucky. They're like, oh, it's fine. We took a wrong turn. It's like they're just not easily bothered and easily stressed. So you got to work out where you are in your stress meter and then really work out, okay, how can you. You get back on track? Because everyone knows how to make themselves feel better. And like Russ has already said, if you cannot see a future that really can fester and player in your mental health. So you've got to be able to constantly come back and draw back to a central plan. You got to know where you're going. And I think what's really stressful is for people who even had a plan and it got completely obliterated you, you've got to be able to sit back down and rework out. How can you get back on track? And again, thinking of what can you control? Not what is out of your control? Because it's like, have you guys all seen that infographic of, like, why am I stressed? Is it something I can control, something I can't control? And you go down the yes or no. And if it's something you can't control, it's, well, then don't be stressed. It's out of your control. It's easier said than done if you just focus your attention to what can I do to control it? Well, I can control how we react to it. Here's the plan. Here's step 1, 2, 3, and 4. And then you have that sense of being productive Again, you have that sense of in control. And certainly for a lot of type A people, if you're listening that, you know that's going to resonate with you because you feel the least amount of stress, the most in control you actually are. That makes sense to anyone.

Yeah, it does. Just to kind of. To summarize this, that there's that old saying, ignorance is bliss. You know, I mean, like, literally, if you don't know what's wrong, you just. Just keep going as if there's nothing wrong. And that if you think about it, that's really the epitome of mindset. That's the power that your mind has over the circumstances that are in front of you. The other thing that just kind of hooking into what sky and Russ have said, a lot of people see things like depression as weakness. And I saw a wonderful explanation of depression as a sickness where it was defined as the illness of the strong wrong. Because instead of giving up when they should have, they literally just kept plowing ahead stubbornly and literally put themselves into a place that could have been avoided if they'd recognized it earlier and done something about it earlier. So, you know this. Cowboys don't crash. You'll be right. All that stuff, we. We need to. There's a time for that. But when we get to that stress level, that's not the place for it at all.

And it can help having a partner that is more affected by stress than you, because when you got someone else worrying about the problems, it means, yeah, you can not worry about them so much. Maybe that's not fair.

If someone is so stressed, you know, it depends what kind of person you are. But if you are that natural leader. And I would, you know, try to argue that if you've ended up creating a whole business and a building company, you have something inside of you that I'm sure everyone can think of a scenario, whether it is your partner, your spouse, somebody on your team. If someone else is really stressed, you step up and you help them and go, okay, well, you know, let's talk about it. What exactly are we stressed about? Let's list it all down. Okay. Amazing. What is the goal? Where do we want to be? Let's put some steps in place and how we're going to get there. And. And you mentored that person to get you forward. But it's really hard to do that to yourself when you are at just, you know, you're on the edge. You're just absolutely stressed beyond belief. You can't do that for yourself. And that's why you have to. You have to reach out. You have to talk to other people. A professional, some kind of mentor, some kind of coach, someone who else. Someone else who has been there before and done it, who can take your hand and walk with you on that journey.

So, Russ, are you just going around finding stress people to make you feel better or.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. When you. Maybe not. Not stress, but I suppose looking at another way, people that. That care. And where we're very fortunate in the association of Professional Builders, we have a whole team and a culture of people that care. And when, you know you've got other people that care about not just the result but the process and what's going on, that really does take a lot of stress away from worrying about what might go wrong or has gone wrong. Because when something goes wrong, when you know there's other people that care and affected as much as you are, that. That removes a lot of stress for you.

And what. What did I read the other day? We never. We never fail. We win or we learn, you know, and that. That's really in this. In this context, you know, things can go wrong, things will go wrong, and that's where we learn the most. You know, the. What do they say? Success is a bitch of a teacher because you learn nothing when you're successful. But, you know, when you. When you're learning these lessons, the trick is to be able to convert that learn into a different way of doing things in the future so that it doesn't happen again. That's really the key. And just in case anybody's kind of watching or listening to this and going, oh, that's easy to say, you know, sitting in your situation, we get it when. When it's gone too far and you've got tunnel vision and you can see no options. Exactly. As sky said, you're not in a place to think logically and work out. I can deal with this. I can't deal with that. You literally just want to run screaming from the planet. What I think we're all saying today is don't let it get to that point. Get some help really early on so that you're not trying to deal with this thing on your own.

And it's almost like doing a temp check, even when you don't have to let yourself get to that point where you are so beyond stressed. Like we've just talked about, everyone has a certain level of stress involved in their life. I think this is just part of the world we live in at this Point now, unfortunately. So even just doing a temp check with yourself once a week or every so often of how am I feeling? How am I stressed? What am I stressed about? And just start jotting it down and noting it down and realize, okay, is there a pattern? I seem to be stressed at the end of every week because I'm not getting through enough. Or maybe it's at every handover or at every. Whatever it needs to be. Try and recognize if there's a pattern, and then you can identify, well, what stresses me about it. You know, what it is. Most often it's because there's no system, there's no plan or no process in place. And so you really feel like you're winging it each and every time. But if we can put more systems, more processes, even more staff in place so there's more things that are delegated, you really can open up your whole world and realize, well, this is how we can solve it and find solutions. But you know what? With a lot of stress and a lot of feelings, even someone was telling me this the other day, even contentment, it just doesn't last. Nothing's permanent in humans. So whether you're extremely happy, you're extremely sad, you're extremely stressed, it's not a forever emotion. And so you just need to wait for the bad times to pass. Not by doing nothing, but they will pass. And you just got to put the right steps in place and the right actions in place to feel good in yourself that you're doing something about it as well.

Even that process of just writing down what you stress about sky like that can just put it in perspective.

Right? Right.

100%. Especially for type A list people like myself.

Yeah. I think writing down is so important because again, it's. It's like the ram, isn't it? If we're trying to hold everything in our heads, we're overloading our ram. But the moment we write down what we got to do, it becomes very clear. And then we sort it into an order, all of a sudden, it doesn't seem quite so bad either. It's. It's quite stressful. When it's in our head, the. These tasks seem a lot worse and bigger than they are, but we write them down, and especially if we start plotting them on a calendar and allocating time to. To do enough, that's. That. That gives us a lot of clarity and removes a lot of stress.

That's huge. That. That's a nugget right there. I mean, I know in my own life until it's in my calendar, I'm stressed about it. And literally, as soon as I allocate a slot in my future life to resolving it, I can ignore it until then and deal with it when. When I get to whatever that point is. So that's. If anybody's out there writing stuff down, write down what Russ just said.

I think it was Einstein said, our. Our brains are not designed to carry this stuff. Yeah, we have to. We have to write it down.

Yeah.

Every productivity expert ever has said that you need a system to put something in so you don't store it in your head. Right?

Yeah, totally. And I think this is a very silly, small example, but I think even the little things can cause you more stress in the background, especially if you can't put your finger on it. You know when you have so much to do on your to do list and you literally are 100 plates spinning, there's so much to do, so you start working on one thing, but you get stressed that something else isn't getting done. And so you switch tasks and you try working on that, and you really do end up just moving pillar to post. You're not actually achieving anything. What we talk about a lot is giving yourself permission to work on a task. And so just like what we've been talking about, if you put it in your calendar, if you plan out your day, you plan out your week, your month, whatever needs to get done, scheduling it in. And you've actually given your. But when you do that, you give yourself permission to go deep, to actually work on that task to actually achieve something. And then by the time you finish, you get to tick it off and you're already less stressed. And it was. The only difference you made was you gave yourself permission. You still have everything else to do. You still have 100 plates spinning in the air, but one's officially been taken down, and you just get to snowball all these wins, and those wins compound, and you end up feeling like on fire at the end of that day, week, month, or even year just because you had a plan of attack. It's a huge, huge difference.

And that. That word snowball is wonderful. I always try and get the easiest things done first because literally what that gives you is some forward momentum. You. You knock off the top three that are quick and easy. You see those three ticks, you're already feeling better because you. You're actually. You're making some progress. So there's a little bit of. Of looking at that list and prioritizing it into what Can I get rid of quickly? And that'll free up the time then to get into the things that are, are. Are maybe going to take you longer to get done. Are we, are we into solutions yet? Are we still in the dark? Are we still feeding the dark dog?

I think we're. I think we're deep into solutions now.

Actually, the point that sky got me thinking about is you not only need to be looking at what's got to be done, but really the first split is what's urgent and what's important. You know, at the end of the day, a lot of business owners fall into the trap of the shiny thing that's making the most noise is the thing that gets the attention. And unfortunately, you know, I've said this for years, nobody can multitask. Forget it. No matter what your wife tells you, not even she can multitask. And the problem is you can only concentrate on one thing at one time to do it properly. If you are concentrating on things that are urgent, you're never going to get to the things that are important, important. And you knowing that in the back of your mind is just going to add to the stress. So it's, it's critically important that we get that relationship between urgent and important sorted very, very quickly in our days and our weeks and our months.

I think important as well, isn't it, to be aware of energy levels because, yeah, we're going to have big things that we need to work on and small things. So, yeah, those big things I always like to allocate, you know, the chunking the rocks down and working on those in the mornings when energy levels are high and doing meetings and, yeah, the stuff that doesn't require so much deep concentration in the afternoon as the, as the energy levels go down. So, yeah, just being aware of your, your own strengths and weaknesses there and what works best for you is quite important.

Yeah, I think we're getting quite a little bit too deep into productivity and getting, getting things done, like str. That's one component of stress. But when you're in the heat of stress, it may not be necessarily that you've just got too much on your plate. It could be other stresses causing you to feel that way. So, sky, you spoke about, like, the levels of stress. If you're at that really top level of stress, what do you do? Like, how do you start, like, diagnosing it and dealing with it?

Well, number one, you can feel it, right? So everyone knows when they are pushed to their limit, it's not something you're like, am I, Am I? Could I take more? Could I not, like, you just know that you are at capacity. You can't do any more. And I would say, like, the first thing to do is you have to share it. Have you heard that saying, a problem shared is a problem halved? So even just, you know, we talked about writing down your list of everything in your head, you feel better even just sharing what you're stressed about and your problem, it's just this weight lifted off your shoulders already just because you've shared it. Now you're not dumping your problem problems on somebody else and giving it to them to solve. It's actually impossible. But even just sharing that is huge. And Andy, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say that's a huge portion of our coaching sessions in our private mentoring business. Coaching level at apb, when it has been super stressful in the last several years, when people are at capacity, they're just getting knocked down after, like, knocked down, sent to them. That's a huge part of what we do. What our coaches do on the team is it's just listening and then helping. You know, once someone has gotten it all off their chest and shared all of their problems. Are you ready? Cool. Let's rebuild. Let's put the plan in place.

Yeah.

And I mean, that point is 100% valid from the perspective that although in this case we're talking about a coach, if you're not talking to a coach, usually the person you're talking to is going to have a far more objective view of the situation you are dealing with. They don't have the emotional connection to it. They're able to just literally look at it objectively. And often they will see a solution that because you are so stressed, you couldn't even think of. I mean, the number of times that I've watched our coaches have a client arrive at a coaching session with their hair on fire because the world is going to end. And after five minutes, the coach says, well, could we do this? And you literally just see the pressure drop off that person. And this kind of, wow, why didn't I think of that? Well, the reason you didn't think of it is because you were stressed out of your mind is why you didn't think of it. So that sharing thing is a. It's a huge component of this, of dealing with it.

What next, Russ? What happens after you share it with someone and you feel that weight off your shoulders? How do you then move forward?

Well, I. I think you've got to get back to your plan. It's whenever, yeah, I'm feeling a bit stressed or a bit overwhelmed. One of the things I always like to do is pull out the business plan and just start looking at the bigger picture. And not just the business plan either, a personal plan, because it kind of reminds you why you're doing what you're doing. And we get sucked into the detail, don't we? We get sucked into the day to day running of things. But just zooming out, reminding yourself of the big picture, that itself can work well. And when you understand that, you can kind of have a reset and get to work on the things that are going to get you to your goals. Because chances are, if you're stressed out, you are doing 101 things that are not urgent, not important, you're fighting fires and they're not, they're not going to help you to reach your goals in any way. But I'll tell you the biggest thing thing, I believe that will bust your stress, especially for builders, but really for anyone in business, it's margins. Because when you got the margins in place, you can pretty much do anything. You can employ the resources that you need, it elevates you. You can advertise to get more leads, you can put salespeople on, you can do anything when you've got the right margins in place. It's such a game changer. And Andy, you probably know better than anyone, but would it be fair to say that the guys with the biggest margins are less stressed?

Is that a leading question?

No, I mean, I don't think so. I think that was pretty open.

That is absolutely true. You know, and I think the truth is, why have they got those bigger margins is because literally there would have been a time in their lives where they were stressed and they reached out for help. Help. And they got help. And all the things we've spoken about, they came up with a plan, they identified the sequence to get themselves out of that situation and then they did. The four letter word, they worked. Okay, that's six letters. They work to, to, to get themselves. It's, it's, it's really that, that thing that, I mean, nobody that I can think of that we've worked with arrived at, at those kind of healthy margins and healthy reserves by accident. There isn't a single person that. It just happened. There was, there's been blood, sweat and tears over years to get to that point. But what is that? That is a plan. That's executing the plan that you came up with.

I think what's really interesting when you, when you really get down into the nitty gritty of the data and you look at the guys that we've been working with for a few years, so we get to see all the different numbers. And one thing that is really interesting to me and really stands out, it's the guys that are taking the most time off to do whatever it is they want to do. And that could be six week blocks, whatever. These guys have the biggest margins and not just the biggest gross margin, but the biggest net margin. Now if you think about that, what that really means is they are working less, which means they need to employ even more people to do the work that they're not doing. So that's coming out their fixed expenses and yet still they have a bigger net profit percentage. So I think that really goes to show that the answer to grow the business, it's not about doing more, it's actually about. About doing less. You know, it's not about who spends the most time in the office. It's actually quite the opposite. And it's why we look at some people that are just so successful and they've got hundreds of kids, like how on earth they get time to run a company as well. But yeah, they've, yeah, they've, they've got people movers to take the family around, you know, to the shops. It's incredible. But yes, because they, they're very protective of their time. Time.

It's not as easy as just bumping up your prices though, is it, Russ?

No, of course, of course not. I mean, if it was, if it was that easy, then everyone would do it. And, and that's the beauty really, is it? It's not easy. Yeah, there's only a small percentage of guys that, that understand it. But I guess the biggest thing is the guys that do this had an open mind, you know, the right mindset to be open to the fact. Because a lot of people that are stressed, they believe that they can't put their prices up and if they did, they wouldn't get any jobs. And that forces them to work on skinny margins and take on more and more work because they think the only way to grow is by doing actually more. But obviously the solution is a combination of both. But yeah, you're absolutely right, Will. It's not a simple thing. Just put your prices up. I mean, you can to a certain degree, I would say that, that because everyone, every single builder that says, you know, I can't put them prices up. Well, yes, you can. You can put them up a bit, you know, 1 or 2% and you'll be amazed that you'll still win contracts. You'll have to do a bit of, you know, verbal education to get those ones across the line. But to do it at scale, there's, there's more things you've got to put in place in terms of your marketing and your supply and demand ratio, you know, etc. Yeah, all nitty gritty, which I know you want to, you don't want to go into that now, but might be a three hour question. It's not simple, but it is possible to do it straight away.

Sky, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on preventative measures for prevent. I guess as you said earlier, you can't prevent stress, but what things can you do to make sure that you're better at dealing it when it, when it does pop up?

Number one, you know what we'll go step zero is just expect it. Let's just prepare that stress happens. So if we can just know that at our baseline, maybe we won't get so rattled when something does go off track. We've just got to be prepared for the unexpected. So that's step zero. But in terms of preventative, this is where having a plan in place really helps. If you are not creating a quarterly plan for your building company, so what, you know, we've talked about this on previous episodes. You don't need to go down into the detail, but we talk about creating a three year plan for your building company. What's more, you need to create a whole vision for your building company. But then you break it down to where are you going to be in the next three years and what is that date? What does your company look like? All of the detail there. Then how about in 12 months from now, one year from now, where does that mean you're going to be all of the detail figures, how many team members you have, what the company truly looks like and then in order to achieve that in one year's time, what do you need to do in the next 90 days? And that's called a quarterly strategy strategic plan. And so you're going to know what you want to achieve in the next 90 days with your financials. But then of course, what are your big rocks, your big action items? And that forms the basis of your plan. It's all towards it. It's all geared towards working toward your three year goal and your ultimate goal for your building company. And that in itself does wonders for you because you know, if you feel stressed and overwhelmed. There are a hundred people plate spinning. Well, what is important for me to be working on right now? It's like what Andy was saying at the start, urgent versus important. And you know, we sort of, you know, that's a whole topic in itself, but it's being very realistic with what is actually urgent and what is important because we can kid ourselves as well when, you know, we feel super stressed. So knowing exactly what that long term vision and plan is for our building company, what does it mean we need to do in the next 90 days? Having that plan in place is critical, but we've got to be able to check in with that plan and have people that can keep us accountable to that plan on a regular basis. Otherwise, if you just do it at the start of the quarter and then you look at it at the end of the quarter and that was the two times you've ever looked at it in your entire life, there's absolutely no point in creating it. So we need that consistent reminder and accountability to know if we're working our way toward those goals. Having a plan in place, number one, is exactly the best way you can prevent getting stressed. But we know that plans can get derailed. Things can happen. So the second part to this answer, I would say in terms of preventative measures to stop being stressed is to constantly. Everything you work at inside your building company needs to go in with the intention of creating a system. The first time you do it, you're going to put it into a procedure and build on it from there so that your mentality and the culture inside your building company is you're always going to improve it. It doesn't have to launch the most perfect system to begin with. Don't stress yourself out by having this goal of perfectionism. But if we are going to do our first handover, let's document everything that we've done now, or at least our 75th handover if we're just consciously thinking about it. And next time let's just make sure it's a little bit better. Let's do what we did last time and improve, improve, improve. But when you start documenting everything and you include everyone on your team to do that, you can build your systems manually, you're a heck of a lot quicker, and suddenly you've got more systems in place for the company, things are a lot more repeatable. You know what to expect on certain things. So maybe you can start evening out all these ups and downs of when you're stressed versus when you're not. Because you know what you're expecting with each part of the process and you're building company as well. That would be my 2 cents. But I'm keen to hear what you guys think as well.

Oh, I'll go for some more fun ones. I think in terms of, of preventing it. I'd. I'd go for holidays, hobbies and exercise. Yeah, that would be my, my key advice. And if you, if you look at it in reversal, I mean, exercise, that will. A bit of exercise each day is going to keep your energy levels high. You'll be so much more productive. So definitely, you know, encourage especially anyone that's starting to feel stressed. Yeah. Cut down the drinking or cut out the drinking. Do some exercise. Yeah. Make a massive difference. Hobbies. Well, if you're anything like me, if I'm not actually doing something at the weekend, I' to jump on the computer. I'll bounce out of bed, you know, 5 o' clock Saturday morning and I'll be on the computer and I'll stay there all day if I don't have anything to do. So I need hobbies to like drag me away. I mean, Andy, I should have said, like, plug your ears because, you know, he'll be berating me for this should be switched off. But I can't. It's because I, I love it so much, I just jump on. So, you know, hobbies are a good thing, I think, because they all drag you away from, you know, just like repetitive getting stuck in, in, in the job. But holidays as well. You know, pre plan your holidays, leave it until it's too late and think, I need a holiday. You know, plan them for the next year. I'm planning holidays for this time next year now. You know, making sure I've got the slots in and they come up and you think, oh, I don't have time for this. But you never regret it. You get that recharge. So holidays, hobbies and exercise. That would be my tips.

Excellent. Andy, anything to add?

Yeah, I mean, Russ's point about holidays. The strange part is if they're part of your plan, you can take the time to off. You know, I, I get a lot of guys that, particularly in the early days in, in one of our mentoring or coaching programs, they say, I can't afford to take time off. And I give them the simple question, if you and I went out and we ate a bowl of bad shrimp and that meant that we were incapacitated for three days, what would you do? And the answer is you would just deal with the outcome of that shrimp and life would go on. And it really makes people sit down and go, you know what? Realistically I could take a long weekend and we make it a part to every single client that we work with. We want to see their annual vacations and holidays booked. And in every single 90 day quarter, usually in the month where there is five weeks because there's always one, that's where you take a long weekend. And you know what I find it does for me is don't I hope that sky isn't listening too closely to what I'm about to say because we have some quite serious constraints on what needs to be in our inboxes at any one time. But what do I find? The fact that I know I'm going away. I don't want to leave with anything in my inbox or a task not done. I want it clear so that I can enjoy my time away. Well, what does that mean? I plan to get that stuff done because that stuff's done. I'm not stressed. And it's so literally this the stuff that sky and Russ are talking about. These are really stress preventative measures. They will stop you getting stressed if you put those kind of things into place. My personal one goes back to what I said earlier. If you can learn from every mistake, what does that mean? Your company is going to get iteratively better every time you do something wrong. There's that wonderful scene in Dumb and Dumber, the movie where Jim Carrey gets home from work and he's, he's. He's working as a. A, I think a FedEx type courier dude and he's badly scratched and broken and his, his mate says to him what happened? And he said, I fell out of the airway jet bridge again. Come on, how, how do you fall out of the jet bridge again? And really that's the thing we need to learn in our business. If we can see there's a mistake, how do I fix it? Change the sop so we never ever talk about that thing as again. Your life is just going to get progressively better and better.

You know what? I'm going to add one more because it piggybacks onto that perfectly. And it would be community for so many reasons. But a huge one is that you can actually learn from a lot of other people's mistakes and you can move forward so much quicker if you are involved in a community of other builders who have been there, done that. You can have some that have got like 20 years experience on YouTube, you maybe some that are younger but if we can involve people in communities that can share their biggest learns, their biggest mistakes, what they're doing right now, how they're, you know, killing it, you can grow a hell of a lot quicker. You can not make the same mistakes, expensive, expensive mistakes in this industry. So that's a huge part, but obviously the second part as well. You just feel less alone. You realize, you know what, What? It's not just me. It's not just our building company going through something. The whole industry is, or, you know, it's. It's not just about you anymore. And I think that can help for that reason as well.

That's exactly why we're setting up APB chapters all over the U.S. canada, Australia and New Zealand. These chapters are run by Builders for Builders, and they address exactly what sky has just described. You know, the ability to speak openly and honestly about what's going on in the industry, the challenges they're facing. Because, yeah, let's be honest, it's not always easy to talk about this to anyone else. People don't understand. You've only got to read the comments on Facebook, haven't you? The general public have no idea what it's like running a residential building company. They think it is so, so easy. They're not a clue. So you need to be talking to people that understand what you're going through.

Well, thanks for joining the podcast today, Russ. Sky, Andy, you've provided a ton of value about managing stress in a building company. I've tried to write down my list of takeaways, but there's literally too many to read out. I'll just give my top liners, control what you can write down and share your experience with other people. Put a plan in place, take a holiday and do some daily exercise. Russ, I love that one. And learn from your mistakes, which is a huge one that Andy provided at the end there. So I appreciate all of the advice you've given today. I'm sure everyone's got a ton of value out of the podcast. Also, a huge thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave a review. But otherwise, have a great day and see you next time.

Thanks, Will. See ya.

Bye.