Episode 461: How to Turn Customer & Employee Excuses Into Action

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If you own a construction business, you probably had this happen to you during the sales process. A prospect tells you now is just not a good time and the job goes nowhere. It just dies. Maybe you’re trying to get an employee to do something and they say, I just don’t have time. And that change or the process, the thing you want them to make never gets implemented. You can see the excuse. You know what’s going on. You know, there’s something underneath, but

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If you push too hard, they dig in. If you back off, nothing changes. And whether you push or do nothing, nothing happens. What if you had a better way to identify that excuse, to hear the excuse, spot the distortion of reality that’s underneath it, and then ask a few questions that help the other person talk themselves into taking action. That’s what I’m gonna show you in this episode. There are three excuses that I hear over and over.

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during the sales process, getting employees to make changes. And once you learn to recognize them, you’ll start hearing them everywhere. And then there’s one other group that uses these exact same excuses that we’re gonna get to later. The thing about excuses is excuses don’t sound like excuses when you’re the one making them. They sound like facts. So let’s take a look at the first one. Hey, I’m Todd DeWalt with.

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the construction leading edge from construction leading edge.com. help construction business owners, custom home builders, remodelers and commercial GCs systematize their business so they can get out of day to day operations and build companies that run without them so they can make more money, get their life back, have more freedom. So the first excuse is probably the most common. Let me know if you have ever heard this from your.

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Prospects during the sales process or from your employees now isn’t the right time. Now is not a good time. Now isn’t the right time. It’s not the right time to do this. Sometimes they actually say those words, but sometimes it doesn’t sound like that. It might sound more reasonable, more logical. Maybe you’re talking to a prospect and they say, we’re just really busy right now. Or maybe next year.

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or maybe prices will come down, maybe interest rates will come down. The family’s really busy, we’ve got a lot going on. Let’s wait until spring. Now, if we dig into this, what’s the assumption underneath all of those? The assumption is that the future is gonna be more convenient than the present. Maybe they’re assuming that the future them is going to be better equipped to handle whatever this is than the present them.

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They’re assuming that later is somehow going to come with fewer problems, fewer distractions, more certainty, better timing, lower prices, that this magical, mystical future is going to come where everything is better. And maybe it will, but maybe it won’t. Waiting feels like no decision, but waiting is still a decision. Employees.

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can use the exact same excuse. Maybe you’re trying to get them to take on some new responsibility, do job logs, do a better job in job tread or builder trend or resio. And they use the exact same excuse. Their version usually sounds something like, I don’t have time. We’re slammed. Can we do this after this project? Let’s wait until things slow down. We’ll deal with this in the winter.

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When things slow down or that’s a great idea. Let’s start this in January. Okay. But when does the construction company magically stop being busy? Some people think, well, construction companies shut down in the winter and they don’t work for three or four months. And maybe there are some like that, but most of them need to operate 12 months a year. Right. There’s always another project. There’s always another deadline. There’s always another customer. There’s always another fire. There’s another thing that feels urgent. So this.

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quote, when things slow down can become another way of saying never. And I think the, don’t have time is often a smoke screen. I think I don’t have time is just a smoke screen. Maybe, maybe they are really busy, but there may be something else underneath that. Maybe they don’t want the inconvenience. Maybe they’re uncertain. Maybe they don’t see the payoff yet. Maybe they don’t see what’s in it for them.

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Maybe they’re waiting for some feeling or they feel safer. Maybe they’re afraid of something happening. I saw this cartoon recently that I really liked. It’s a doctor talking to a patient and the doctor says, which will fit into your busy schedule better? Exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day. You see, the point is not exercise. The point is that being busy does not eliminate

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consequences. Okay. Sometimes being too busy to solve a problem guarantees that the problem will cost you even more time later. In fact, I would say being too busy is a symptom of an underlying problem and saying you’re too busy is sort of like saying, I’m too busy mopping the floor to shut off the faucet that’s running over. Sometimes being too busy to solve a problem guarantees that the problem will cost you even more time later. So when you hear something like

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Now isn’t the right time or I don’t have time. Don’t argue with the person. Don’t ask them questions. Why don’t you have time? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you do this? Don’t argue with them. Here are some questions you can ask them. These are like Jedi level questions because people take action when they hear themselves say why they want to. So they’re not going to take action when they hear you say what’s going on. They will take action. They’ll change when they hear themselves say why they want to.

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ask these specific questions. Number one, okay, now is not the right time. I get that. What specific variable needs to change that will make it the right time? What specific variable needs to change? And that will force them to think about, well, I don’t really know. That forces them to define what they’re actually waiting for. And then you can ask a question like this. I get it. You’re super busy. lot of priorities you’re juggling.

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But are you waiting for conditions to change or are you waiting to feel 100 % ready? Is it really about the conditions or are you waiting to feel ready? feeling of readiness. And then here’s another one you could ask. When you think about the biggest changes in your life or your career, how many of them happened when conditions were perfect? How many of them happened when everything was just the way it was supposed to be? How many of them?

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came with a guaranteed outcome. So when you think about career changes, getting married, having kids, buying a house, starting a business, how many of them happened when conditions were perfect? And how many of them came with a guaranteed outcome? So when you ask those questions, they can help a person really inspect the underlying assumption under the excuse. This is what we want them to do because now’s not a good time, we’re really busy.

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I don’t have time. These can be the real problem, but there could be an underlying excuse. So you’re not telling them they’re wrong. You’re causing them to dig in and defend themselves. You’re helping them to look at the situation differently. Okay. The second excuse sounds even more practical because now we’re talking about inconvenience. So the second excuse that you want to be prepared for that prevents your prospects from taking action and moving forward with projects. also.

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prevents your people from taking action is this. It’s some version of this is going to take too long or it’s going to be too hard or it’s going to be too painful. Right. So if you’re trying to sell a prospect on a remodeling project, deep down, they might be thinking, I don’t want to deal with the mess. That sounds like a huge hassle. I don’t want my house torn apart. What’s going to happen if you’re building a custom home or

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any sort of project that requires a lot of decisions, they may think there are too many decisions to make. I just don’t want to deal with all of that right now. And what are they going to do? They are going to optimize for short-term convenience. Think about what they’re focused on. They’re focusing on the dust, the disruption, the decisions, the hassle, the temporary inconvenience, but they may not be doing the math right. They may not.

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be fully accounting for another year of living with that same problem. Living in a house that doesn’t work for them. Another year of frustration. Another year of not enjoying the space or looking at this room that’s just not right or dealing with a kitchen that just doesn’t fit their family’s needs. Another year of having not enough bedrooms or

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bathrooms that are too small, another year of missing whatever benefit they wanted in the first place. Right. Here’s the thing. They’re comparing the pain of changing to zero pain. They’re assuming that change is going to be painful. Maybe, but they’re also assuming that to do nothing has no pain. They’re assuming there’s no cost. There’s no downside to not changing. So instead of comparing the temporary pain,

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of changing to the pain of staying the same. What they need to do is compare the temporary pain of changing to the pain of staying the same. They need to understand there’s a cost of inaction. There’s a cost to do nothing. Hey, Todd here. Let me know if this sounds familiar. Your phone never stops ringing every subcontractor question, every supplier issue, every schedule change, every customer request lands on your desk. Instead of leading your business, you’re spending all day managing the details of putting out

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familiar? And you probably want your business to grow, right? But when you’re already stretched thin, the gaps in your business start to grow too. And that’s when things start to fall apart. Here at the Construction Leading Hedge podcast, we talk a lot about building a business that runs without you. But we understand that can be hard to take the step and actually start, especially when you already have a million other things pulling at your attention. Our friends at Belay make it easy. They pair you with a U.S.

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based assistant who takes over the operational tasks that prevent you from leading your business. And they do the vetting, the onboarding and the matching for you. All you gotta do is schedule a free call, tell them what you need and they’ll find the right assistant for your team, budget and workflow in as little as a week so you can start building a hands-off business right away. One of the simplest ways to start getting your time back. So text the word EDGE

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E D G E to 55123 or visit the link in the show notes to learn more about Belay and connect with them. Reclaim your time for what matters most. Text the word EDGE to 55123 or click the link in the show notes or the description to take the first step. It’s not just your prospects and customers who do that. Employees do the same thing.

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You try to introduce a new process and they say, that’s going to slow us down. That’s more work. The old way is faster. Why do we need another process? And here’s the tricky part. The old way may actually be faster today. It may actually be easier today. That’s what makes the excuse persuasive. But the question is, what does the old way keep costing us tomorrow? How much is the old way going to cost us over the next year?

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If the old way causes the same problem over and over again, the comparison is not change versus no pain. The comparison is temporary inconvenience versus recurring pain and cost. Most people assume there’s no cost to continuing to do the same thing. They assume it’s zero cost. And the belief underneath all of this is that the short-term pain of changing is worse than the long-term pain of staying the same.

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temporary convenience is obvious, the long term pain becomes background noise. And that’s how people tolerate dysfunctional situations. For years, it’s easier to do the same dumb, uncomfortable, painful thing. One more week, one more month than to deal with something new. So when you hear this excuse, don’t push harder. Don’t ask why can’t you? Why won’t you?

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Don’t make people defensive. Here are some questions you can ask. First question is, what are you concerned will happen over the next 12 months if nothing changes? What might strain? What might break first? Ask your prospect that. Ask your team member that. Let them think about that. Then ask, what might it cost you every month that you delay? What opportunities might you miss out on? And the cost doesn’t have to just mean money. It can mean time.

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capacity, stress, opportunities, relationship, momentum. Again, you’re not arguing, you’re helping them to compare the short-term inconvenience against the long-term cost. The third excuse that your prospects and your team members bring up is different because people usually don’t say it directly, right? You see it in the way their thinking starts to spiral. Here’s the third excuse that you need to be able to handle like a Jedi. It’s too big to tackle.

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Right? It’s too big. It’s overwhelming. How are we going to eat this elephant? So a prospect might start thinking about a project and then they realize they’re going to have to make all of these selections. They start thinking about all the decisions, every unknown, every what if, every problem, every possible thing that could go wrong. And pretty soon this project feels enormous. They think they have to solve all of these problems on day one. And they say,

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You know what? There’s just too much to figure out. I don’t even know where to start. How are we supposed to make all of these decisions? I need to think through all of this. I need time to think about it. And if somebody’s building a custom home, of course building a custom home feels overwhelming if the homeowner thinks they have to figure it all out themselves. Or if it’s a complicated remodel project, or if it’s a commercial build, if your prospect thinks…

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They have to figure out all of the details themselves. They’re going to get overwhelmed and they’re probably going to say this is too big and it won’t take action. But the thing is they don’t have to figure it all out themselves. That’s what your job is. That’s what a contractor is for. That’s what a custom home builder, a good remodeler, a good commercial GC is for. They need a plan. They need a process. They need a guide.

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right? They’re not professional customers, they need a guide. So if you think about climbing Mount Everest, if you were going to climb Mount Everest, if somebody said you have to climb Mount Everest, or you have the opportunity to climb Mount Everest, or a friend of mine, who’s my daughter’s roommate’s dad, he has climbed Everest several times. And when I think about climbing Mount Everest, I start thinking about questions like, I have no idea what to wear. How long will it take? What’s the right path? What sort of food should I take? How do I

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trained for it. And I have all of these questions. Frankly, I have no interest in climbing Mount Everest. But even if I was really interested, it’s pretty likely I would get overwhelmed with questions and then just put it off. Say it’s too big. Now it’s not a good time. Maybe I’ll do this sometime in the future. So if you were to climb Mount Everest, you wouldn’t assume that you had to personally figure out the entire route and all of these things by yourself before you got started. The first thing you would do is you would go hire a guide.

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Right? Same thing if you were to go fly fishing or hunting in the mountains of Colorado for the first time, the first move would be go hire a guide. Find somebody who knows the terrain, somebody who’s done it before, somebody who knows where the pitfalls and the dangerous places are and the things are going to get you killed. Somebody who knows what matters next. That’s what your customers and prospects are looking for. And employees do the same thing with a big change.

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They hear about a new system or a new process or a new software or a new opportunity. And they immediately start asking questions like, what if this happens? What if this happens? What if it goes wrong? What if, what if I get fired? How are we going to do that? What folder are we going to put this in, in our Google drive box or drop box? What happens when this comes up? They’re mentally jumping from step one to step 38 to step 42 before they’ve even taken the first step.

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And because they’re thinking about steps 38 through 472, they don’t ever take the first step. And sometimes they’ll throw up other excuses, but this is the real problem. And here’s the belief. are a couple of beliefs that are underneath this. If you were to dig around, there are some underlying beliefs underneath this one. One of them is if I can’t see the whole path, I can’t take the first step.

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If I can’t see the whole path, then I can’t or I shouldn’t take the first step. Another underlying belief is I need to know how everything will work before I begin. I need to know I need to have every question answered. I need 100 % certainty before I even begin. But doing something new, new process, new role, new opportunity, changing anything in your day to day or taking on a big

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project if you’re a homeowner or a business owner, it’s sort of like driving down a road you’ve never been on at night. You have a destination, you have a route, you have a path to follow, but your headlights only show you a short distance ahead, right? You can’t see mile 38 from the drive. You can’t see the entire path.

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before you get started. can only see what the headlights show you. You can only see a short distance ahead. And that’s okay, right? Because as you move forward, more of the road becomes visible. So that doesn’t mean you just jump in and start doing random things. We are not a fan of doing just enough to start. You still need a plan. You need a route. You need a process, right? But think about a construction project, the things you build every day. You would not look at a multimillion dollar

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six story construction project and say, I can’t build this whole thing in one day. So I can’t build it. I won’t even start. What do you do? You make a plan. You make a schedule. You sequence the work. You break it down into phases. You build it step by step. One bite at a time. Basically you take a big project and you think small. Small thinking is how you get big projects done.

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You break it down into small bites the same way you would eat an elephant one bite at a time. So when you hear somebody who’s overwhelmed by the size of the thing, you can ask questions. Here are some of those Jedi level questions. This is what you would ask a prospect, for example, you get the sense that they’re overwhelmed, ask them this question. If you had a guide for this process, what would they do for you that would be most helpful? If you had a guide to guide you through this process,

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What would they do for you that would be most helpful? And then notice what that does. It shifts the question from how am I supposed to figure all of this out? How am I supposed to make all of these decisions for this really complicated project that I’ve never done before to what kind of help would make this more manageable? So if you zoom out, your prospects and your employees are basically getting stuck in…

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three distorted ways of thinking. These are distortions of reality. They’re not necessarily objections. It’s not that they’re difficult. It’s not that they are indecisive. They’re just looking at the world through these lenses that are distorted. So your job, if you want to help them get unstuck, is to see things clearly, to help them take these distorted lenses off and see things more

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clearly. So here are these distorted ways of thinking. Number one, the number one distortion of reality is the future will be more convenient than now. Or future me will be better equipped than present me. Number two, the number two distortion is avoid today’s inconvenience even if the problem keeps going. We’re all about optimizing for right now. So if it’s inconvenient today, we ain’t gonna do it.

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So avoid today’s inconvenience, even if the problem keeps going. Distortion number three is something like, need to understand the whole path before I can begin. I need 100 % certainty on every step before I take the first step. And when you think about it from the outside, these are pretty easy to spot in other people, right? You can hear these things from the prospect. You can hear them from an employee and you can ask questions.

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that helped them really look at the situation differently without arguing with them or without pushing them or without them getting defensive because you can ask these questions. But I told you there was one other group, right? And there’s one more place that these exact same excuses show up. And this one’s harder to spot because you’re much closer to it, right? These things show up in the way construction business owners like yourself

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think about changing their own companies, right? So you may be doing this too and you may not even realize it. Remember this, excuses don’t sound like excuses when you’re the one making them. They sound like facts. So let’s take a look because I do it, you do it. And if we want to make changes, we have to understand what these distortions of reality are, what are the excuses we’re making so we can get past them. So let’s go back to the first one.

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Now isn’t the right time. Now is not a good time. So here’s what that sounds like when a construction business owner says it. We’re going to do this in January. We are going to do this, man. We are going to, we’re going to kick this thing right in the ass. We’re going to do this. Fill in the blank in January. Once sales pick up after we hire someone, when things slow down, when cash is a little bit better, or it sounds like now just isn’t a good time.

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I don’t have time, something like that. Right. So when a customer says, maybe next year, you can see the assumption. When an employee says, let’s do this thing when, when things slow down, you can see the assumption. Right. But when you say it sounds more reasonable, sounds really logical. It sounds responsible because it’s yours. So what do you do? Ask yourself some of the same questions.

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If you hear yourself saying that, ask yourself this question, what variable, what specific variable needs to change in your business that will make it the right time? What specifically needs to change that will make it the right time? So that later becomes now. What exactly are you waiting for? And then you can ask, are you waiting for conditions to change, some external condition? Is that what you’re really waiting for or?

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Are you waiting to feel 100 % ready? Are you really waiting for some feeling of readiness? And then when you think about the biggest changes you’ve made in your own life and career, how many of those happened when conditions were perfect? How many of those things happened when there were no obstacles, when you had so much money in the bank and you had so much time?

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How many of those things happened when conditions were just perfect? And how many of them came with a guaranteed outcome? Probably not many. You see, January isn’t a strategy, right? After you hire somebody isn’t necessarily a plan. When things slow down, that’s not a date. So…

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unless you can define what actually needs to change later, just keeps moving forever. Right? If you keep saying, future me is going to be better equipped to handle this than present me. You know what? When you get to that future me, you’re just going to keep saying the same thing and you’re just going to keep kicking the can down the road. Now let’s take the second excuse, which is some version of this is going to take too long. It’s going to be too painful. It’s going to be hard.

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A of business owners use this one anytime they know something needs to change, but they don’t want the disruption that comes with changing it. Sounds something like, this is going to be a pain. I don’t want to rock the boat. This is going to create more work before it gets better. I would rather just deal with it myself for now. It’s easier to keep doing what we’re doing. I don’t want to rock the boat with my team. And this could apply to a team change.

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delegation, maybe there’s this difficult employee issue that you’ve been putting off that you need to deal with leadership structure, accountability, changing a process, sales, pre-construction strategy, a hard conversation, basically anything uncomfortable, right? And the logic is the same as the homeowner who doesn’t want to deal with the mess. You may be choosing a familiar long-term problem because fixing it creates temporary disruption.

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So ask yourself the same questions. When you think about that situation that you’ve been avoiding, that makes you uncomfortable. What are you concerned will happen over the next 12 months? If nothing changes 12 months from now, what might happen if you don’t deal with this situation? If nothing changes. I studied structural engineering back in college at the university of Kentucky, and we studied what’s the failure mode. What is going to break this?

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steel beam in this concrete column, what’s going to break first? So you might ask yourself the same question. What might strain or what might break first? Maybe it’s your capacity. Maybe it’s the team. Maybe it’s your family time. Maybe it’s the customer experience that might take a hit. Maybe it’s your margins if you’re not happy with the way your margins are trending. Maybe it’s your ability to grow. Maybe it’s your reputation in the marketplace. Maybe it’s your energy.

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Maybe it’s your heart, could be your health, right? And then you can ask that same question. What might it cost you every month you delay and what opportunities might you miss? You have to understand there is a cost of inaction. When you think about doing that uncomfortable thing, there will be a cost to that, but you’re assuming the cost of doing nothing is zero. That’s very likely that you’re racking up costs, financial costs in the way of

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in the form of profit bleeds like rework and giveaways and schedule delays, your team could take a hit. You may lose a valued employee, you may burn a relationship with a client. So you’ve got to understand there’s a cost of inaction. And then there’s the opportunity cost. What opportunities might you miss if you don’t take action, right? Because cost, it’s not just money, not everything that matters can be measured, right?

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It could cost time, energy, opportunity. You may spend another year not having the freedom that you want. Could be another year of being the bottleneck in your business. So now the third excuse, it’s too big. It’s too big to tackle. I’m getting overwhelmed just thinking about it. So I’m going to stop. And this is one that I catch myself doing, right? I’ll be looking at a complicated tasks.

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really a project in business or maybe on a construction project. It’s complicated. A lot of moving parts that are missing pieces. There are question marks, things I’m not sure how I’m going to do things. I’m not sure how it’s going to work. And my brain starts telling me, Todd, you don’t have time to do the whole, the whole thing. So just don’t even start. Right. Or I don’t know step 38 and 42. So I won’t take step number one. Right.

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So for example, I remember years ago, I was managing a project at a hospital and it was an emergency department addition, pretty complicated project, but there was this one thing that I kept putting off. It was a precast concrete monument sign. It was about 30 or 40 feet tall. Imagine this rectangle concrete pylon, 30 or 35 feet tall, six feet wide, 16 inches thick.

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And it had the hospital’s logo on it. And I needed to get this thing designed and built. And I remember my boss, he would ask me about it. Hey, how’s it, how’s this pylon sign coming? I’m like, yeah, yeah, I’m going to work on it. And he called me out on it and he said, look, you just need to break it down. And I realized I was looking at this thinking about steps 38 and 42 before I even get started. And I just put it off. So I just.

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Got into it. I got started, took it one step at a time, made a plan and got it working. But what I told myself was I don’t have time to deal with this. Right. And this is where that I don’t have time shows up again. But in this case, in a lot of situations, it’s really not about time. The problem is overwhelmed. Right. I’m trying to solve the entire project in my head before I even begin.

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And there’s that belief again, if I can’t see the whole path, I shouldn’t take the first step or I need to know how everything will work before I even begin. But again, you would never manage a construction project that way, right? You wouldn’t try to excavate frame, rough in, finish and landscape all at the same time. Right? You plan it, you sequence it, you break it into phases. You think small, you take a big project.

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And you use small thinking to break it into pieces. Then you execute. And you don’t need to have certainty. You don’t need to see step 42 from step one. You need a destination. You need a route or a plan to follow, and you need enough visibility to know what comes next. And remember what we said about the homeowner, right? The homeowner doesn’t need to know how to build the house. They don’t need to know everything about building. They need a good builder.

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They need a process. They need a guide, right? And why would changing your business be any different? So ask yourself this question. If I had a guide for this process, what could they do that would be most helpful for me? Maybe they could help you identify what to fix first. Maybe they would help you identify the constraint that’s really holding you back and give you clarity so you’re not chasing…

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their wrong thing, chasing some shiny object. Maybe they would give you a proven process. Maybe they would help you sequence the work, give you a roadmap you can follow. Maybe they would help you identify blind spots, hold you accountable, help you avoid the mistakes that other people have already made, help you get the lesson without the scar, right? Maybe the thing that feels too big is only too big because you’ve assumed you have to figure it all out by yourself.

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What do you actually do with all of this? Right? Here’s what I would recommend. Use a simple three-step process. Anytime you hear one of these excuses from a prospect, a customer, an employee, or maybe yourself. Step one, name it. You can’t defeat what you don’t define. So you need to name it. Which excuse is this? Is it now isn’t the right time? It’s too painful or inconvenient, or is it it’s too big? Don’t attack it.

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Don’t shame the person. Don’t beat yourself up if it’s you. Just recognize the pattern because you can’t question a distortion that you haven’t recognized. Step two, question it. Use those calibrated questions. If it’s the now isn’t the right time, then ask the question, okay, what specific variable needs to change? Are we waiting for conditions to change or are we waiting to feel ready? If it’s, this is going to be too painful. It’s going to take too long. Ask.

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What happens over the next 12 months if nothing changes? What is waiting going to cost us or cause us to miss out on? What opportunities are we going to miss out on? If it’s the, is too big excuse, ask, okay, if you had a guide for this, what would be most helpful? The objective is not to argue, it’s not to change their mind. The objective here is to help the other person inspect their own thinking. And if that other person is you, you can do the same thing.

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Step three is make a plan. It’s not just take action and jump in and start doing stuff. It’s not just do something. Start by clarifying the desired outcome. What does winning look like? Where do you want to end up? Make a plan, break it into manageable pieces. Use small thinking, sequence it, get help where you need to, and then execute it one step at a time. Right? Big changes, big projects.

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become much more manageable when they stop being one giant hairy mess of a problem and they become a plan. That’s the power of small thinking. So imagine how differently you would make decisions if you got good at catching these patterns before they made the decision for you. Instead of saying, we’re going to do it in January. This is just not a good time. We’re going do this some other time. What if you actually ask, what actually

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needs to change? What conditions need to change? Instead of, is going to be a pain, we’re not going to do it. You ask, what if I’m still dealing with this next year? What opportunities might I miss out on if I don’t do this? What’s the cost of inaction? Instead of just throwing up your hands and saying, I don’t know how to do all of this. You ask who, not how. You ask who could help me, who could guide me through this process.

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You might find the problems stop sitting unresolved and stop festering for years. Changes actually happen. Your team gets stronger when they make better decisions, right? Imagine if your team got better at identifying their own excuses and the excuses of your prospects and they made more and faster and better decisions. You might stop being the answer to everything. The business might become more predictable. You might get more freedom.

36:42
So here’s what I want you to remember, right? Your customers use these three excuses. Your employees use these three excuses and you may be using the exact same ones without realizing it. Now isn’t a good time. It’s going to take too long and be too painful. It’s too big and overwhelming to tackle. And remember excuses don’t sound like excuses when you’re the one making them. They sound like facts. They sound responsible.

37:13
And if the thing that’s holding you back right now is I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to fix first. I don’t know how to sequence all of this. Remember what we’ve been talking about. You do not have to figure it all out at once. You don’t have to figure it all out alone. A homeowner does not need to know how to build the house from start to finish. Somebody climbing Everest doesn’t need to discover the route alone. And you don’t have to reinvent the path to a better construction business that runs without you from scratch.

37:42
Maybe what you need isn’t more time. Maybe you need clarity. Maybe you need a process, a roadmap to follow. Maybe you need a guide. And that’s exactly what we do on our business evaluation calls. We help construction business owners identify where the company might be stuck, where the constraints are, what needs to change first, how much hidden profit there could be in the business, and then what the path forward could look like. And if we can help you implement it, we’ll show you how.

38:10
If not, we’ll leave you better than we found you. You’ll still leave with more clarity about where the constraints are, what’s broken and what to fix first. So if you’re a custom home builder, remodeler or a commercial GC and you have a team and you know something needs to change, go book your business evaluation call with my team. There’s a link in the show notes or the description, or you can go to constructionleadingedge.com forward slash apply to book your call. This is not for everybody.

38:40
You wanna see if you qualify for this call. And I wanna leave you with one question. I wanna challenge you with this, right? I’ve heard that self-awareness is like hugging a porcupine. The closer you get, the more uncomfortable it becomes. So which of these three excuses do you use the most? It’s not whether you use one, it’s which one are you using the most? Now isn’t the right time. This is gonna be too painful.

39:10
Or number three, this is too big and overwhelming. Pick one, then do something today that breaks the pattern, Schedule the meeting, have the conversation, send the text, ask for help, create the plan, break it down, identify the variable that really needs to change. Find the guide, make the decision that you’ve been postponing. Don’t let an excuse that sounds like a fact keep making decisions for you.

39:39
I’m Todd DeWalt with Construction Leading Edge from constructionleadingedge.com. If this helped you, do me a favor, hit like, subscribe, share this with another construction business owner who needs to hear it. Visit us at constructionleadingedge.com. Go listen to the Construction Leading Edge podcast if you want to hear more content like this, and I’ll see you next time.