Episode 433: 5 Decisions That Free the Overworked Construction Owner

00:03
If you’re a construction business owner and you’re feeling overworked and stretched, if you’re working more hours but enjoying it less, if you’re starting to wonder whether you’re letting your team down or letting your clients down or whether you’ve got what it takes to grow the business or if you even want to grow this business, here’s some good news. You’re not broken. You’re not failing. You’re not bad at leadership. You don’t need to burn the whole thing down and start all over. You’re exactly where most good construction business owners land when they grow past a certain point.

00:32
This is a very natural stage of growth. It’s a good thing. It just feels painful because most construction business owners try to solve the pain the wrong way. Maybe you’ve tried hiring more people. You’ve tried software. You’ve pushed sales and marketing harder. You’ve just worked longer hours. You’ve tried to manage your time better. Maybe you’ve hired a VA. Maybe you’ve tried to get more organized and for a little while it seems to help, but then the pressure comes back.

01:02
it comes back even stronger because none of those things, the people, the software, the VA, the sales, none of those things are actually addressing the real issue. And until you identify the root cause, you will just keep trying harder and you’ll keep wondering why it still feels like everything depends on you. There are five decisions that determine whether this stage of growth turns into freedom or into a bigger, more stressful version of the same

01:31
trapped. Today, we’re going to walk through those five decisions. But first, you need to see what’s actually happening, what’s really happening. And we’re to get into that. You’re listening to the Construction Leading Edge podcast from constructionleadingedge.com, where we are all about systematizing your construction business to maximize freedom, impact, and wealth. My name is Todd DeWalt, and my team and I have helped over 400 construction companies eliminate chaos, grow their profits, and grow their team.

02:01
since I started this podcast back in 2014. So let’s jump into it. Here’s what the stage actually looks like for a lot of the people that I talk to. Let me know if any of this sounds familiar. You’re doing solid revenue, you’ve got a good reputation, you’ve been in business for a while, the phone rings, sales aren’t the problem, you plenty of work, maybe more work than you can handle, but the execution of the work feels heavier than it used to.

02:30
One business owner told me recently, I’ve been in reactive mode like 90 % of my time in reactive mode for years. 90 % of his time was spent in reactive mode and it has been that way for years. Another said, we’re nailing the sales side. I’m just concerned about execution. I want it to be predictable. I don’t want things falling through the cracks. Another one said, everything’s still funnels back to me. And here’s what that looks like.

02:57
In real life, it’s 6.30 PM, your subs and your team are texting you. Clients want clarifications. They’re hitting you up on email or text, asking questions about what’s going on. Your project manager or superintendents need a decision from you. Selections aren’t fully locked in. So something gets stalled. You jump in because you’re the fastest solution, right? There’s a fire to be put out and your backs up against the wall. So you just jump in.

03:27
Maybe you have dinner with your family, but after that, you’re not present with the family answering emails. And you keep answering the same question. You’re rewriting something that somebody else on your team has already finished or they was supposed to be finished. You’re smoothing over a small mistake that could have been prevented. And you just tell yourself, we’re just dealing with growing pains. We’re, just growing, but underneath there’s something heavier. There’s something.

03:55
This doesn’t feel right. You feel like you should be further along. feel like you shouldn’t be needed for everything. You feel like you’re missing something, like you’re letting your team down. And then you’re also not as present at home as you would like to be. So you’re like in this tension between, I take care of my customers? Do I take care of my team? Do I take care of my family? You feel like you have to, you’re always in a constant situation of letting one of those people down. And the kicker is.

04:24
You’re working harder than ever. Maybe as one guy told me, as his revenue goes up, his working hours go up and he’s up to like 60 or 70 hours a week. You’re working harder than ever, but it still feels fragile and you’re not making the kind of money that you feel like you should be making for the risk and the effort that you’re putting in in distress. So let’s zoom out. This is like normal day to day, but my question for you would be how long has this really been your normal? When did

04:55
spending 50 % of your time, 75 % of your time in reactive mode, when did that become the standard? When did those, when did your work hours creep up from 40 to 50 to 60 to 70? When did those 50, 60, 70 hour work weeks become just what it takes? When did that become your normal? And how many times have you said, you know, after this job finishes up?

05:21
Things are going to be different after we hire one more person. When things slow down, when we have more work, have less work, then expect things to slow down, but they don’t slow down because you’re not getting to the root cause problem. So what happens if nothing changes? Let’s say you fast forward two years and you are in the exact same situation. You have the same structure, but more projects, more complexity, more people, more pressure. Two years from now, what’s that going to be like if nothing changes? Will you have more freedom?

05:51
Or will your business be even more dependent on you? And then think about the ripple effects of that. What does that do to your stress level? What does it do to your sleep? What does it do to your waistline, right? To your health? What does it do to your family? What does it do to your marriage and to your kids? Some people have told me that they just feel like watching their life go past.

06:15
What does it do to your best employee who may be getting stressed now and they’re tired of the ambiguity and they’re looking for a light at the end of the tunnel? What’s going to happen with them a year or two down the road? A lot of people I talk to are very reputation dependent. A lot of their work comes from referrals or word of mouth. And what happens to your reputation when those misses and the details that fall through the cracks, the missed expectations, when they continue to stack up and they start eroding customer confidence? Maybe at some point you start thinking,

06:44
Man, if this is what 2 million feels like, I don’t know that I want to be a five. If this is what 5 million feels like, I don’t think I want to be a 10. You can’t scale up efforts and working hours. It’s not a lack of ambition. It’s not a lack of vision. You’ve hit a ceiling of your current design of your business. So let me try to paint a picture for you. You can’t add a second story to a house that wasn’t designed for it, right? Imagine somebody came to you and said, Hey, we’re going to

07:12
We’re building a one story house and then they get the house three quarters of the way built and they decide to know what, put a, let’s put a second story on there. Hey, we’ve got, we bought the land. We want to put a second story on there. So just add another layer. He puts them floor joists on there and let’s go with a second story. Can we do that? He would say, we can’t do that. The design won’t support the additional load. It’s not that the current

07:38
Construction is bad. It’s not that the crew failed. It’s not that you had a bad framing crew or bad management, bad plan. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that the structure was designed for one story. It was designed to be a one level building. And if you try to stack another level on it without making changes, what’s going to happen? Cracks are going to appear. Doors are not going to close properly. Well, you’re not going to get a, you’re not going to pass an inspection.

08:08
And the stress transfers to places that weren’t designed to carry that load and working harder doesn’t fix that. You don’t tell the framers to work harder. don’t get frustrated at the drywall crew because of the cracks. You have to redesign the structure, right? If a client said, we want to add another story on our house, you would say, we could do that. But because of the additional load, we have to redesign the structure to make sure it can handle it. And your business is the same way.

08:38
You didn’t build your business wrong. You just built it for the level that you were operating at. And now you’re trying to essentially put another story, another level, additional load on top of the structure and more effort won’t fix it. Here’s the thing. If you are dealing with the things we’re talking about, if you’re shaking your head saying, yeah, that’s me. It’s like I’ve tapped into your phone or it’s as if we’re

09:06
We have a camera in your office and we’re listening to your conversations, which we’re not doing. Here’s the thing. You’ve outgrown your current design for your business and more effort won’t fix that. You are getting the exact results that your business is designed to produce. And that design worked just fine at a certain point. It worked a couple of years ago. It worked when your revenue was lower. It worked when your team size was smaller. It worked when the complexity of your projects was lower and smaller.

09:36
that design for your business used to work, just doesn’t work at this level. I’ve said this before, what got you here won’t get you there. And the design of your business that got you to this point won’t get you to the next level. A $2 million a year design will not get you to 5 million in revenue. A $5 million a year design won’t get you to $10 million in revenue. If you want different results,

10:04
You have to redesign the system. If you want different results in your business, you don’t need to fire your people. You don’t need to just try to plug in software. You don’t need to manage your time better. You don’t need to try to read books and try to change little components of your business. You don’t need to have L10 meetings. That’s not going to solve it for you. You need to redesign the system because systems scale.

10:33
Effort does not. So this doesn’t start with software. It doesn’t start with hiring. Most of these podcast episodes, I give you really tactical, practical things you need to do. Okay. This one’s going to be a little different because I can tell you those things, but if you don’t make some decisions, the strategies and the tactics won’t work for you. I’ve seen a lot of people try to take little parts and pieces.

11:03
from traction or from EOS or from some book they read and they just try to bolt it on to their current design and it doesn’t work because you need a new design. So if you want a new design, there are five decisions you need to make first. The first decision is that you are going to get in the driver’s seat of your business, right?

11:31
The truth is right now, something is shaping your business. Could be urgency, habits, chaos, other people’s expectations, subcontractors, customers. Here’s how I like to say it. Somebody is going to determine how successful your business is going to be. Somebody is going to determine what your lifestyle will look like. I say it might as well be you. So you have to decide, are you going to be in the passenger seat?

12:00
of your business and your life and say, well, it’s, you know, the economy. Well, these clients and these people that I have, and none of these subcontractors and the, you know, it’s somebody else’s fault. You’re to be in the passenger seat and then bitch and moan about the results you get. You’re to bitch and moan and blame circumstances and your team and the lack of work or the fact you have too much work, customer subs, the president, the economy. If that’s the case, then you’re just going to have to take what

12:29
life gives you. So the first decision is that you are going to get in the driver’s seat of your business. I say somebody is going to determine how successful you are. might as well be you. Decision number one is to decide you are going to get in the driver’s seat. You are going to say, look, I got myself here. There’s a scene from the pursuit of happiness. Will Smith played Chris Gardner in this movie. And there’s a scene where Will Smith is in a

12:58
bus station bathroom and he’s looking at himself in the mirror and Chris Gardner tells the story of what really happened. And he said, I was looking at myself in the mirror. I’ve got my young son sleeping on the floor of this bus station bathroom. And he was looking at the mirror and asking, how did I get here? I had Chris, how did you get here? And he said, it came to him and he looked in the mirror and said, I drove here. He took ownership.

13:28
of his situation. And he said, I drove here, the decisions I made, the things I put off, the bad decisions I made got me here. So step number one is for you to decide, take ownership and decide you’re going to get in the driver’s seat and you are going to control your destiny. Not the customers, not the subs, not the president, not the economy, not anything else, not tariffs, not the stock markets, not interest rates.

13:58
you’re going to get in the driver’s seat. That is step number one. Decision number one is that you decide to get in the driver’s seat. The second decision is that you’re going to design your business around results instead of around people. There are two fundamentally different approaches to designing a business. Approach number one that a lot of people take is they look at the people that are around them. They look at the current clients that are coming to them and they try to design their business around those people and their limitations.

14:29
And they just take what comes to them. And Susie over here is, she’s pretty good at bookkeeping and office admin, but she doesn’t like to do selections. And she also enjoys doing a little bit of CAD work on chief architect. And then Steve over here likes to do a little estimating, but only up to a certain point. He’s not really good at this and he’s pretty good at that. So you can design your business around the limitations of your current people. That’s approach number one.

14:58
Or you can design your business around the results you want it to achieve. So decision number two is to decide you are going to design your business around results, not people. To say, I’m going to design my business around results. That means you will have clear expectations, clear ownership. It’ll be clear who is accountable for what outcomes. People matter, but results must not depend on their personality.

15:26
I did a podcast episode on this a weeks ago about how to design your business around average people, not unicorns. Unicorns make your business fragile. If you design your business around results and design it in a way that average people can succeed, that makes your business much more resilient. So decision number one, decide to get in the driver’s seat. Decision number two, decide to design your business around results, not people.

15:52
Decision number three is to decide what you want your business to produce for you. This process is to look two years in the future and ask, what do you want your lifestyle to look like? What does your work week look like? How much do you travel? How many hours a day do you work? What role are you playing? What does your personal income look like? What does your family life look like? And then you work from right to left.

16:22
That’s over on the right side of the page and then work from right to left and back into, what does this business need to look like to produce those results for me? So a lot of people, and it’s very likely what you’re thinking right now as well. I don’t want this and I don’t want that. I don’t want to work too many hours. I don’t want to work on the weekends. I don’t want you have this list of I don’t want. And that’s great. But what do you want?

16:49
And this decision about what you want your business to produce for you requires you to answer a surprisingly difficult question, which is what do you want? What do you want? It’s like that scene on the notebook where Ali, who is incredibly annoying in my opinion, doesn’t know what she wants. And Noah just keeps saying, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? And that’s a question you need to answer. What do you want? And when I ask people that.

17:17
I bet if we sat down and I asked you, you would tell me, well, I don’t want this. I don’t want that. And you would see me like, okay, hold on timeout. What do you want? Because you can build your life around what you don’t want, but that doesn’t really help you design your business. What do you want? So decision number three is to design your business around your I wants. What do you want? Get clear on what do you want and decide on that. Decision number four is to decide that you’re going to stop

17:46
managing symptoms and just dealing with symptoms and instead decide you’re going to eliminate the root cause problems. This is no more symptom management, no more playing whack-a-mole. We’re going to go into mole eradication. No more, let’s just get through this job. No more, let’s just work more hours. If decisions bottleneck with you, that’s a design problem. The root cause is a design problem. If projects

18:17
get started before they’re ready. If you’re stuck in the just enough to start trap and you have a pre-construction deficiency, that’s a design problem. The root cause of your problems is a pre-construction deficiency. If everything lives in your head, the root cause is you and you have a lack of documented processes. If you want to change, you have to make the decision that you’re going to solve the root cause problems. So that’s decision number four. Decision number five.

18:46
is to decide you are going to redesign the system that is your business on purpose, not hope, because hope is not a strategy, not grind, not, hey, let’s improve as we go. Maybe things will get better on their own. Redesign the business on purpose. And this is where most owners hesitate because redesign means slowing down long enough to think, zooming out and looking at how things should be done.

19:15
how things currently work, making some changes and ultimately admitting that what got you here won’t get you there. And it does not mean starting over. does not mean going around drilling a series of one inch diameter holes around the foundation of your office and inserting dynamite and burning, blowing the whole thing up. doesn’t mean firing everybody. doesn’t mean doubling. It doesn’t mean any of that stuff. What it means is intentionally shaping how your business operates. So it produces.

19:45
the outcomes and the results you decided on. You have to make the decision. We’re going to redesign this system. We’re going to slow down so we can speed up. You’re to make the decision that yes, you’re working 50, 60 hours a week. Maybe you’re at red line, but you have to decide, are you going to put in a little bit of effort for a short amount of time? Are you going to invest some time and effort now so that in a few months you’re

20:14
team is no longer redlining or are you just going to keep dealing with the problems? So the decision is you’re going to redesign the system on purpose. You’re going to put the energy and time into it to redesign it. Now, some of you are already thinking, well, that means we’re going to have to change our software and we’re going to have to, you’re like thinking, oh, we’re going to have to put a purchase order system in place and we’re going to have to, probably going to have to have a difficult conversation with.

20:40
Steven over here who won’t do this. I’m going to fire this person. What will happen is if you continue down that rabbit hole, then you’ll talk yourself out of it and you won’t do anything. My best advice for you when it comes to these decisions is separate the decision from the implementation. Because if you mix those two together, then you probably won’t decide because you’ll, you start thinking I need to redesign the business and you immediately get into implementation and

21:08
All of the work it’s going to take and what if it doesn’t work and how, how is he going to feel about it and whatever customer is going to think about it. And you get yourself overwhelmed and you get so bogged down on implementation that you just close your laptop. Go do something that is just sanctified procrastination and you make no decision. So the best thing you could do is separate the decision from the implementation. Decide is this what we need to do? Is this the best thing for the business? Is this.

21:36
best thing for my family? Is this the best thing for my team? Is this the best thing for my clients? And don’t get bogged down on implementation. You’ll figure out the implementation. That’s what you do. You’re a builder, right? You don’t need to know every little step and have every little problem solved before you start. When you start a project and it’s the same way when it comes to redesigning your business. So separate the decision from the implementation, decide that you’re going to do it. You’ll figure out the implementation.

22:06
Okay. So if you want a business that gives you freedom, for example, or if you want a business that is sellable, or if you want a business that you can hand off to your kids or key employees, you have to design it that way. If you want a business that runs without you making every decision, you have to design it that way. Nobody drifts into a well-designed business. Drift creates chaos, but design creates freedom because systems scale.

22:36
Effort does not. So I want you to imagine this picture this. It’s a Tuesday morning. You walk into the office at eight 30 or nine o’clock. You’ve spent some time with your kids or your wife or you’ve gone to the gym and you walk into the office. You’re not worried about what is going to hit you in the face. When you get there, you’re not behind. You have a few things on your list you need to accomplish. see the projects are moving.

23:02
Not because you’re pushing them, but because the system is working, your team is advancing them. You find out about your $2,000 issue that your project manager handled without you. And they did a great job. They followed the process. Clients questions are getting answered. You’re actually getting feedback from clients about how great your team is doing. And you’re finding out about things, good things from your clients. Selections are getting made.

23:31
projects are moving through the system, like a well-oiled machine. There’s no scrambling, no last minute, hey, we forgot. You go into your office and you shut your door and you can work for four hours uninterrupted and you can get work done. Around lunchtime, you pull out your phone and you see that you had like two or three calls, a couple of text messages, no, urgent. Not because nothing is happening, but because everything is happening the way it should. Your phone is quiet. Your inbox is quiet.

24:00
Not because nothing’s happening, but because everything is happening the way it’s designed to happen. And you spend your time doing what you want to do. Planning projects, sales and business development, looking at new opportunities, coaching your team, leaving at two o’clock in the afternoon to go to your kid’s game or go get your pilot’s license or some hobby that you’ve never had time to do in the past. And you’re able to step away for a long weekend or you can step away for a week or two weeks.

24:30
and things run smoothly without you. You sleep through the night. You don’t wake up at two o’clock in the morning. You look at your business and think, this is what I meant to build. This business is something I could have only dreamed about 10 years ago. Same company, same market, different design. What you’re seeing is freedom through a well-designed system. Not because you worked harder, but because you designed it

24:59
differently. In fact, with a good design, you can often use the same software, many of the same people, same project types, with a different design, people work fewer hours, there’s less stress, more profits, more freedom. So if that vision feels relieving, if that’s what you’re looking for, maybe if it could be a little painful to you, then that’s a signal. So let me ask you something.

25:26
How long have you been thinking about putting real systems in place in your business? How long have you been saying, need to make some changes. I need to work fewer hours. last 12 months were like the previous year. Maybe you feel like it’s groundhog day where you each year feels like the same year. How long have you been saying, I should have more freedom. I should have more money. I should have less stress, but I’m so slammed and so consumed that I don’t know where to start. And then think about this. What’s the cost of inaction?

25:55
All right. There’s a COI, there’s a cost of inaction, profit bleeds from rework and schedule delays and giveaways, missed opportunities. You’re missing out on new work. Maybe you’re turning down work because you don’t have the confidence or the capacity to go after it. The sleep that you’re not getting back, the time with your family that you can’t replay. Time is one of the only non-renewable resources you have. Right? You only have so many trips.

26:25
around the sun. And here’s the hard truth. If nothing changes, the pressure doesn’t just flatten out. It doesn’t plateau. It compounds. And you already know this isn’t about working harder. You’ve tried that. You know that more effort won’t fix a design that you outgrow. If you want a custom home building or remodeling or commercial general contracting business, you’re doing over a million dollars a year. And this is you, if you’re still listening and this resonates with you. If you’re stuck in the day to day, you can’t

26:55
take a vacation, you feel like you own a job instead of a business and you want to get out of your business and make it run without you, then this is for you. All right. I’m looking for a handful of construction business owners who are serious about redesigning their business. So it produces freedom and not pressure. So it produces impact instead of stress in about eight weeks will help you systematize your construction business. So the team runs the projects.

27:23
and you get your time back. So the system runs the projects for you. So we can only work with a small group of people. If you wait, then you’re choosing another season of the same. You’re choosing another month, another six months, another year of the same. You are making a decision not to act. You’re making a decision to wait. You’re deciding that you’re going to continue dealing with the symptoms. So if you’re ready to make a decision to

27:52
design your business the way you want it to be, and you would like our help, I would invite you to go to constructionleadingedge.com forward slash apply, A-P-P-L-Y, and take the first step, which is to book your business evaluation call with my team right now. If it’s not a fit for you on this call, we’ll let you know, we’ll point you in the right direction, but if it is, this could be the turning point for you. This is the first step that all of our successful clients have taken.

28:22
If you’ve heard them on our podcast talking about the results, this is how they all started. And actually they made those decisions, those five decisions that we talked about. So we’ll get on a call about 30 to 45 minutes, talk through your situation. We’ll evaluate your business. We’ll give you a detailed business evaluation report. And then if it makes sense to talk about working together, we’ll go into those details. If not, no problem, no pressure. So

28:46
There’s a link in the show notes to schedule your business evaluation call, or you can go to constructionleadingedge.com forward slash apply. A P P L Y. You’ve outgrown your current design. If that’s the case, then more effort, more people, more sales, more software won’t fix it. Your business is a system and it is producing exactly what it’s designed to produce. And that design used to work. It just doesn’t work at this level and it won’t get you to the next level.

29:14
So if you want different results, redesign the system. Systems scale, effort does not. Thanks for listening. My name is Todd DeWalt from constructionleadingedge.com. If you’d like our help, you know what to do next. See you next time.