00:00
You right. So welcome back to the podcast. In this week's episode, I want to talk to you about why it's essential to think about coming off the tools in your business. Now, I know this can be a little bit of a controversial subject, and we'll go into why in a bit more detail later on, but I'm going to make my case on why I feel it's vital to do. So to come off the tools and what it will mean for your business if you take the plunge and you completely come off the tools in your business. Now, most of us, when we start out in a construction company, a lot of us come from a trade background, don't we? 

 00:38
Maybe we've served an apprenticeship and at some point we finally take the plunge to go out there and try it on our own and start our construction company up. And that's exactly what I did. I worked for a few years with my dad doing a carpentry apprenticeship. And then eventually, when I was in my early twenty s, I decided I was going to start my own building company and I joined up with a mate to do that. Now, when you first start out in business, there's no doubt that you have to work on the tools even though you've created your own new company. There's no getting away from the fact really, that even you've got a new company, but you've got to start out on the tools. 

 01:15
When you start this business, you need to earn an income and you just wouldn't have the infrastructure around you to support a team. And it's doubtful that you'd have enough work to warrant employing a load of tradespeople. So most of us will always start out in business on the tools, which is absolutely fine. That's the natural progression, isn't it? And then gradually you'll work away. Over the months and maybe years ahead, you'll start to build up a bit of a reputation of delivering good work. Your name will get out there, you'll get busier. And most tradespeople I know, they take great pride in their work, they're conscientious. So if you're that way inclined, it's natural, isn't it, for the business to start to grow because you've got the right attitude in business and that's great, that's probably what you've wanted. 

 02:04
And you'll start earning better money, you'll increase your prices and at first things can seem to be going really well and great. Your business is growing at a nice fast pace. Now, if you're ambitious and you're hungry for the business to grow, you'll keep on taking more and more work on. So now you think, right, wow, I need an employee. Now maybe I need another tradesperson or a laborer or an apprentice to come and help you. So you increase your capacity for work, great. You take on more work, you gradually increase your customer base and you should start making a bit more money. But then all of a sudden there's a bit of a switch that happens in every business as you keep trying to grow the business. So let's give you an example. Let's maybe you take on an employee. 

 02:53
Let's call him Bob. So Bob, you think, Well, Bob can start working on separate sites. To me you think, that's great. I'll be able to take on even more work, I'll be able to earn even more money. But then you notice once you take Bob on that things stop running as smoothly as you'd hoped and you'd planned for. So let's imagine the scenario. So you turn up to your job to get some work completed. You go and get your tools out of the van. The apprentice gets everything ready for you. You're just about to get started and then all of a sudden the phone rings. Who is it? It's Bob. And what does Bob say? Oh, Greg, I need some extra materials dropped over here. All right. Okay, Bob. No worries. 

 03:36
Well, why don't you just pop down the local builders merchants and pick them up in your oh, I haven't got the van today, Greg. It's playing up. I'm driving my wife's car today so I can't get materials. Can you go and get them for me? So what do you do? Begrudgingly. You go and pop to the shops for Bob. You give your apprentice some work to do and you go and pick up the gear and the materials that he needs. You drop him off to the site. And finally you get back to your own job at around 11:00 a.m.. And you've done nothing all morning. All you've done is waste time and petrol and you've just managed to sort Bob out. 

 04:11
And you get back to the site and your apprentice, he's sitting around with nothing to do and is just about to go and start lunch. So now you're really annoyed and you're frustrated and you pick up your tools and you start to get a bit of work done. So you work away. And then 02:00, the phone rings again. Who is it? Yeah, you guessed it. It's Bob. Yes, Bob, what's up? Oh, Greg, I've got an issue here with the floor. It's rotten underneath. I can't lay on top of this. Can you come and have a look? I don't know what to oh, Bob. Look, just ask the client if they want the floor replaced. If it's rotten, they've got to replace it. See what the client wants to no, I have asked the client. They want to speak to you. 

 04:51
They want you to come over. Right. Okay, Bob. All right, fine. I'll pop over now. So, 02:00, you pack up your tools. The client looks at you a little annoyed as they've looked at you've, literally done nothing at all day. And then you head over to Bob's job. So just think about that. That the 250 quid that you were expecting to earn that day by working on the tools has ended up being more like 50 quid. And you probably spent most of that 50 quid on petrol. So you go and sort the issue out with Bob that day. But you notice that week after week, the same things keep happening. Your clients are getting annoyed as you aren't getting the work done fast enough. You're annoyed because your bank account balance is starting to drop. You start questioning, was it really worth getting Bob? 

 05:40
You start working late into the evenings to get your estimates and your quotes done. So then your partner starts moaning at you're not seeing the family enough and you start to ask yourself what's gone wrong? And you really start to question whether should you just shrink back, shrink things back down again and go back to how it was with just you and the apprentice? But deep down, you know that you want to grow. So what do you do? You stick it out a bit longer, you work even harder and the pressure builds and builds. Does that story sound familiar at all to you? Well, if it does, look, I completely get it because I've certainly been there and done it. It's a really painful process trying to grow a business, especially when you're stuck on the tools. 

 06:29
And many will struggle on for years and years in the same predicament and they'll just accept, they'll think, oh, that's how it is and that's what business is like, and they'll accept the situation they're in. So really, the purpose of this podcast, I just want to make a bit of a case for you, why you seriously need to think about coming off the tools completely. And the case I'm going to make is for three reasons. It's for your wealth, for your health and for yourself. Yeah. So let's examine those three things your wealth, your health and for yourself. And we'll look at those three things and see if I can make a compelling argument for you to come off the tools. So, firstly, let's have a think about how coming off the tools affects your wealth. 

 07:14
Well, when you think about it's virtually impossible to build long term wealth when you stay on the tools because the size of your business is just going to be capped, isn't it? There's only a certain amount of work that you're going to be able to take on at any one time. And think about it logically. Let's imagine you can earn profit of, say, 200 pounds a day by being on the tools. You might think, no, I earn more than 200 pounds a day. But profit wise, do you really earn more than 200 pounds a day? You might charge more than that, but think about you've got to take the cost of your tools, the cost of fuel, the cost of insurance, your accountant, your phone bills, the list goes on and on. 

 07:53
So actually, when you look back at it, at the end of the year, 200 pounds a day might be quite good, actually. So we won't include bob's wages and our apprentices wages and the amount you might earn off of them, because that will get a little bit complicated and you're probably not going to earn as much as what you think out of them for the reasons we mentioned above. So let's just presume you earn 200 pounds a day profit and you work five days a week on the tools. Now, you then need to allow for all the extra hours that you're putting in, because you might be working five days a week on the tools, but then you've got evenings and weekends where you're pricing up work and you're visiting clients and you're sending out quotes and invoices. 

 08:32
So the reality is you're probably actually working six days a week each week, but you're only earning 1000 pound profit. So you get your 200 pounds a day, your 1000 pound a week. And let's say you work 48 weeks in a year. We'll account for let's allow four weeks for some holidays. You might have a few weeks off your sickness and your bank holidays and things like that you're not going to get paid for those things. So let's say you actually physically charge for 48 weeks of the year. So you've earned a grand a week for 48 weeks, 48,000 pounds. But as we said, you've worked a six day week. So that's actually 2304 hours over the entire year. So that works out at 20 pounds, 80 pence per hour. Think about that. 

 09:22
I bet you weren't expecting that figure as an hourly rate, were you? So if you work six days a week at 48K profit, you've only earned 20 pounds, 80 pounds an hour. So how does that figure sound to you? 20 pounds an hour? For all that work, all that stress that you've taken on, are you really going to be able to build long term wealth for you and your family on 20 pounds per hour? But yet that's the reality for many who stay on the tools year after year. All right? Some will get some jobs on price. Granted, their profit might end up being more than forty eight K a year. If you can get to take stuff on price, you'll certainly earn a bit more money. But you'd be really surprised at how many tradespeople and business owners earn less than this. 

 10:12
Some much less than 48,000 a year. They'd love to earn that. So staying on the tools, it massively affects your wealth, doesn't it? Your income is capped. You haven't got enough time to grow the business, you haven't got enough time to manage staff. And so, naturally, you have to stay small. You can't leverage other people's time. You think about that. When you've got other people working for you're going to be able to earn more, aren't you? Because you're leveraging the profit you can make off of them too. So the more people you have working for you, the more money you should make. But you can't leverage that money if you're working on the tools because you won't have the time to manage those people. So really, that's reason number one why you should consider seriously coming off the tools. 

 10:59
And it's for your own wealth, for your long term wealth. You need to think about coming off the tools because you can't create long term wealth when you're working on the tools day in, day out. The second reason, as we said it, is for your wealth, your health and for yourself. So let's look at reason number two for your health. Now, if you've been in the trade for a while, you no doubt you've got friends or work colleagues who've gone and got themselves injured at some point. I've got friends that have lost fingers, got and cut their fingers off on chopsaws and things. I've got others who their knees are shot to bits, they're like roofers or floor layers and that, and they just can't walk properly because they're on their knees all day. 

 11:43
Some friends I've got have got long term back injuries, others they can't hear properly because maybe not wearing ear protection and things like that. The list goes on and on and just myself, I think about my own self. I've been quite fortunate, really, but I've had broken ribs where I've fallen through ceilings on loft conversions, I've had multiple stitches on my head and my face through accidents at work. I had a work colleague that was with me who had a really bad fall off a ladder at height, smashed his leg up. I've had another one who had to have skin grafts and things. 

 12:19
So there's a lot that goes on if you think about it, and think about all your friends that you've got in construction, work colleagues, I bet you could name an absolute list, a big list of all the injuries that are out there. And it's not surprising, isn't it, really, because the construction industry is tough, it's a really tough industry, it's highly dangerous and it's physically taxing. You try and go and get insurance, health insurance, at work, and see the cost of it because they know that it's a dangerous industry. So health insurance is so expensive when you're in this game. 

 12:54
Now, if you're young enough or maybe you're lucky enough, maybe you haven't had a bad accident yet, but if you're in the game long enough, then it's highly likely that you're going to get an ongoing problem just due to wear and tear, because the body is just not designed is it to be. You think that the way we bend, we crouch, all the crawling we do lifting at awkward angles. And if it's not your body, maybe you're constantly breathing in dust and fumes on site. You think about your lungs. So you do this year on year, you're probably going to have a long term injury at some point, aren't you? If not worse than that. So even if factor number one wasn't motivating enough for you to get off the tools, is health a reason that you should consider it? 

 13:40
Well, I'm sure your partner and your kids will say that it should be. Health is absolutely crucial and we want to protect our long term health. So reason number two, the reason you want to come off the tools is to protect your long term health. So we've covered wealth and health as valid reasons, but what was reason number three? Remember we said it was wealth, health and yourself. So what we want to do when we're talking about yourself is have a real think about what do you really want out of life, what do you want to achieve in life and in business? Do you want to be working on the tools until you retire? Or does the thought of that absolutely petrify you? 

 14:26
If you're listening to this podcast about successfully growing your business, then I doubt you want to stay on the tools until you retire. Because most of us, what do we want out of life? I've said it before, we want more time, we want more freedom and more money. So is that what you want for yourself? Well, I presume that's what most business owners want, so let's presume it is. Now, the only way you're going to get time, freedom and money is by coming off the tools. Now, we've spoken about money already and wealth, but what about time and freedom? Well, you're going to have no time, are you? If you're on the tools, as we've said, you're physically going to be working, what, 8 hours a day, five days a week? 

 15:06
And then you got to go and get all your paperwork done, you got to get your invoices done and your estimates, you got to go and visit clients. And time is the most precious commodity we haven't we? It just goes so fast, especially the older you get. And it's only when you come off the tools and create a successful business that you get to win your time back and still earn good money. You can get other people to do the physical trades work, can't you? You can get other people to do your invoicing and your estimating. You may even be able to get other people to do the sales for you. 

 15:41
Yeah, if you get to set up and run your business the right way, you're going to have plenty of free time and you're going to have freedom to go and do what you're passionate about or go and take on another venture. So that's what we're trying to achieve. You want to do this for yourself. Now, talking about freedom to do another venture, I know many of my clients that I work with. I often ask them what their goals are. And so many of them always say, I'd love to get into property development later on eventually, and I make sure that when we're working with them, that we're able to create the time and freedom for them to go out and be able to pursue these goals. Because what's the point? 

 16:22
If you've got these goals and you can't live the life that inspires you, then what is the point of all this work that you're putting in? And freedom too? When you think about freedom, for me, if I was describing freedom in business, I'd say it's knowing that you can go and take a week or two off of work and know that your team members have got your back. They can cover you while you're sitting on a beach drinking your cold beer or your pina colada without having to worry about responding to emails. That's freedom, isn't it? Or maybe you want freedom to be able to go and play golf once a week if that's what floats your boat. That's freedom, isn't it? 

 17:00
To me, real freedom in business is knowing that it's not all going to fall apart if you step away for a bit, and that you can still earn money if you're not there physically working. That's the type of business you want to grow. And you just can't do that when you're on the tools. If you stop working when you're on the tools, that's it. Your business stops, everything stops completely and you stop earning money. Now, some people are going to listen to this podcast and they're going to think, well, I just love being on the tools. I just really enjoy it. I've got no desire to expand or grow my company. I'm happy doing this until I retire. And that's fine, isn't it? There's probably no point trying to convince these people to come off the tools. 

 17:41
They don't want the stress of it and they're happy and that's great. Everyone's different. We've all got different personalities, and people like that probably not going to be listening to this podcast for very long, which is fine. But what about you? What do you think? Personal lee, if you really want to grow your business, can you now see why it's so urgent for you to be able to come off the tools? You've got to have that mindset where you want to come off the tools and make it happen. So does my argument stack up for you? Well, I hope it does. You want to come off the tools for your wealth, for your health, and for yourself. Bye.