Marc Watters - Construction Business Blueprint

The Construction Business Blueprint #003 - 5 Red Flags You’re Not Running Your Business (And How to Take It Back)

• Marc Watters • Season 1 • Episode 3

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What would I do if I realised I’d lost control of my business… and needed to rebuild it into a calm, predictable machine?


In this episode of The Construction Business Blueprint, I, Marc, walk through the five clear signs you’ve lost control of your business and the practical systems to take it back.


From time audits and true margins to team autonomy and project sequencing, this is how you stop firefighting and start leading.


You’ll learn:
✅ The daily diary method to expose time leaks and reclaim your day
✅ How the blue-pen review reveals the real root causes of stress
✅ Why financial control goes far beyond “cost plus 20”
✅ How to calculate true profit margins and allocate overheads properly
✅ Simple cash flow tracking and invoicing cadence to protect stability
✅ How staff autonomy beats micromanagement every time
✅ Using checklists, photo proof, and feedback loops to systemise quality
✅ Sequencing projects to protect your diary and avoid chaos
✅ Setting boundaries with clients and learning to say no
✅ Shifting from reactivity to a leadership rhythm with daily huddles, weekly audits, and Thursday planning
✅ A recap of the five fixes and what to do next


If this episode helped you, or you’re ready to get complete control of your business and move away from the chaos, drop me a message below.


I’ll send you the free resources we talked about.


Interested?


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DM the word "DISCOVERY" for more info.


COMMENT below: your biggest takeaways and what you want me to create next! 

SPEAKER_00:

So in today's video we are going to talk about five signs that you've lost control of your business and how to take it back. Are you running your business or is your business running you? So most CBOs don't spot the signs that they've lost control until it's too late. And here are five red flags that you cannot ignore. Number one, how do you spend your time? Do you spend your time constantly doing low value tasks instead of doing high value tasks that actually bring in the money? Well I talk about low value tasks versus high value tasks. So where you're most efficient in your business is actually bringing in the work, planning the work, you know, delegating to your team and staff and really getting the most effectiveness out of those guys rather than you being stuck in the trenches, you know, on and off the tools, micromanaging the guys and running about like a headless chicken to merchants and other things and doing the low value tasks. So how to how to really evaluate what you're spending your time on is to introduce the daily dairy system. So this is what I do with all of my clients with absolutely fantastic success. It's one of the first ports of call that we do when guys come into my program. The daily diary looks like this, and it's really, really simple but very, very effective. What we do is we plan our day in say black pen and we go through all the tasks that need to be done that day in order to move the business forward. Then what you do is you write in in a different colored pen, say blue pen, for example, all the unforeseen tasks that crept into that day. So every phone call that you had to take, every site visit you had to make, every run to the suppliers you had to do, anything that you didn't plan that crept in that you had to react to or fire fight to or whatever it may be, write that in a blue pen. Then I want you to sit in the evening, 15 minutes, half an hour, and trust me, this will transform how you spend your time. You will then evaluate in red pen exactly what happened, as in why did the blue happen? Why did the unforeseen tasks happen? There's usually a reason. When you dig deep enough, you'll find out the answer. So, why did you have to run to the merchants? Well, because you didn't plan ahead and make sure the materials were there when they really need to be there. So that's a scheduling issue, that's a planning issue. Maybe it was a staff or team underperforming, and this will this will creep its head up time and time again, and you'll start to see patterns here. So, what I want you to do is review the day in red pen and write down the reasons why you think those key items or those unforeseen items happened or why they jumped in there. So this will start to show you and really open your eyes to here's what I plan to do today, but here's what actually happened, and here's the reasons why. So when you really take those evaluations and take that time to look at those, that's when you really start to you know approach things differently and act differently and behave differently towards your business and see where you're really actually spending your time and use this as a massive eye-opener. So the daily diary as well, what I want you to do that evening is I want you to plan the next day and do the same thing, rinse and repeat. So plan the day in black pen, add in the unforeseen in blue, and then review in red pen. And that means every day you're reviewing exactly what happened, what went right, what went wrong, what you need to do more of, what you need to do less of, and more importantly, what you need to fix. And you'll also go to bed with peace of mind knowing exactly what you're doing the next day, and that's how you get control of your time even better, whenever you can actually see what's going wrong. So, number two is financial control. Cash flow chaos is usually something that really sets everybody in the spin. So if you have no financial control over your business in terms of what each project is making, what your profit margins are, you know, and you're just pricing jobs and hoping the work and hoping the money's there. But if you find yourself in this repetitive cycle of pricing a job, sticking 20% on, and looking at the bank and saying, Where's the money? That means you have no financial control. If you can't plan ahead, if you can't forecast, if you can't set targets and sort of you're taking jobs on to know financially whether you've hit a target or not, then you have no financial control of your business, and that's where you know you've you're losing control again. It can also be a case of if you're not tracking payments, so you need to track everything going out and everything going in. And there's really simple and easy ways to do this. And again, the these systems and processes of things of tracking cash flow and things like that are things that I have tried and tested over again many many years, over 80 million pounds worth of projects. I've used the most simple yet effective tools in order to manage project costs, manage business costs, etc. etc. All that stuff we have here inside the program, tools and resources, really, really simple yet massively effective things. If you don't know what each margin is in your project, if you don't know how to even work out the margins in the project, it's quite simple. First, what you need to do is you need to price the job at a cost. You need to see what the job's gonna cost you, bar basis to break even. Then you need to add on your overheads. So your overheads, if you don't know already, are any cost that occurs in your business that cannot be directly related to a project cost. So where people go wrong here, and this is where it gets the cash flow chaos, is you price your job at a cost and you add 20% and you think you're making 20% profit, but you're wrong. A lot of the times, for example, your overheads could possibly be anywhere between 10 and 20% of your turnover. So what you need to do then is you need to price your job at a cost, add that 10 or 20% on, and that's you at your break-even point, then you add your profit margin. So if you do this, that'll ensure that you are ensuring you've got good cash flow coming in, that you know you're not just doing enough to keep the lights on and you've always got cash in the bank. But another way is then obviously tracking what's going in and what's going out, ensuring that you're invoicing your clients on time to ensure that you're paid on time, to ensure that your cash flow is right. And again, if you're not using things like Xero or QuickBooks, we've got simple, effective spreadsheets that anybody could use to really keep on top of the finances there. Number three is staff chaos and staff dependency. So if you're not in control of your site team, your your office team or whatever it is, then you don't have control of your business. So if every decision stops at your desk or if things stop moving, things stop operating when you're taken away from it, then you've got you've got no control over your staff or team and no control of your business. The goal here is to become the least important person in your business. So things should still be operating and you know, working as normal, no different from when you're there or when you're not there. And a common problem I always hear and I speak to with either clients that I have on board or potential clients, speak to a lot of CBOs every day, and they'll always say to me that unless they're there, things go wrong. So they have to be there to be in complete control. But actually, that is a limit in belief. So this usually comes down to the business owner and their approach. So generally, you're micromanaging your team. If you're there making every decision, then they don't need to make decisions. If you're there coming at the end of the day and checking all their work, then they don't need to give you feedback. So it's important to give people clear instructions, give the clear instruction and then ask for feedback. So if it's done, if it's not done. You can use tools like Site Auto Pros, you can use WhatsApp just to get photos of stuff and checklists ticked off. There's so many things that you can do to keep control of your staff that you don't actually physically need to be there, but you just need to be a bit more creative about it. And again, we've got plenty of resources inside the program to help with those things. Number four, I would say, is overlapping projects. So project chaos. So we touched on the staff, and this sort of laps perfectly into the job chaos. So if you're running multiple projects at a time and you have no sequencing, no program, no schedule on your calendar, then that's how you know you can lose complete control. There also has to be boundaries in place here with clients. You have to not be afraid to say no and not just take in everything and hope that when you work more, you'll have more success. Because that is that is the old way of doing things and it doesn't work. And you know, most guys in the industry are proof of that. We have to get strategic here on making sure that you're scheduling, using your diary effectively, making sure and reviewing like who's who's were and what what what's possible and what you can actually really fit into your calendar instead of just someone giving you an opportunity and you taking it, because again, not every opportunity is a good opportunity. There's many things you can do here, but again, your diary is going to be your best friend. Just blocking jobs in the diary and seeing who goes where, and when you're speaking to clients, really review that diary before taking on a job. And don't be afraid to push jobs out further than what a client wants or expects, because at the end of the day, that means that the client is actually controlling your business and not you, so you're in complete control, and you know, don't be afraid to say no, there'll be other opportunities, etc. etc. So that leads us on to number five, which is this firefighting mentality and the mindset sort of chaos and how you lose control. So you need to have complete control of your mind, and that is like that limit and belief and that mindset around reacting all day instead of leading. If you've been in the game for as long as I have, it's easy to fall into being comfortable, being reactive, and constantly firefighting and say you work well under pressure, but really that's just a cop-out. When you're working under pressure, you're making quick decisions, you're making decisions on almost with a gun to your head, and you're not really giving them a good, you know, time to think about it. You're not having you know approach to your team, your clients, your projects, everything. So it's all about the approach, and that starts with the mentality. So when you you know sort of have those first four items that we talked about there, how you're spending your time, the cash flow, your staff and team, and then your projects, that's whenever you can take this and really have that mentality and mindset and approach to really plan things out well and make decisions with you know the right frame of mind and the right time and headspace for it, and not just making decisions based on your emotions and just reacting and firefighting everything going because again, that just leads to chaos. Let's look at some of those fixes again. A couple of things I would add, and I know we touched on some of the things though that we can do. So, what I recommend for everybody is to have a daily huddle or meetings, so regular meetings with your team and your clients and even yourself. This will lead to fewer interruptions, it'll lead to better communication, and everything will just run smoother. So, having a weekly meeting with your team and your staff, so with your site guys, I would even recommend doing this on a daily if you can, either on phone or WhatsApp or whatever else. But having those daily huddles and weekly review meetings with your team will make a massive difference. So everybody knows what exactly what they need to do for the day, everybody knows their expectations, and these guys are all professionals, they're tradesmen, they should be able to at least you know go through a checklist and take off jobs, and if they can't, then that's a different conversation. Then another, you know, another great tool here and a great fix is to have a weekly audit with yourself. So, like I said about that daily diary, you can really double down on this and really own your week. So we talked about how we we we finish every day and plan each day ahead the night before. I recommend everybody has if you have a team, have a meeting with your team on a Thursday. Don't do it on a Friday, which is the common thing in this industry because nobody cares on a Friday. All everybody thinks of on a Friday is the week's over, whatever happened, happened, and we'll sort it out next week. Why you have your meetings on a Thursday is crucial and it's because that gives you time on a Friday to make any fixes. So any actions that come out of that meeting on a Thursday, anything that needs to be tied up, any loose ends, any issues, and whatever else can be addressed on a Friday, meaning that on Monday you start the week on a clean slate and you can hit it hard and you can hit it with a plan. So every Thursday, review the week and plan the week ahead, and that'll put you in the best food forward and give you the most control. Putting trackers in place then for the case. So for the financial controls, we need to have trackers in place. You need to have full visibility and full clarity on your numbers. It can't be in here. Financial worries will actually bog you down, and every it's probably the worst problem to have. If you're worried about finances, everything else will fall down around you as well. You know, you can't make decisions if you don't know if you have the money to invest in the business. You know, you need them you need to make decisions based on clarity. So having trackers in place for invoices in, invoices out, each what these projects make and will give you full financial control and financial confidence to be able to make better decisions in your business and also to help you sleep at night. So let's just review those five fixes in order to have complete control of your business. So checking how you spend your time and your energy, checking in on your cash flow and your cost reporting and cost tracking. Number three, your staff, be on top of your staff, delegate and don't micromanage. Number four, your diary and making sure you don't overlap your jobs, and then five, your mentality and your approach to your business. If you work on these five things and you incorporate the things like the daily diary we spoke about and have the trackers in place, then you'll easily have complete control of your business and move away from the chaos. If this video helped you, or if you want to get complete control of your business and move away from the chaos, or if you want any of the resources we spoke about, feel free to drop me a message below and I'll be happy to send those across to you.