Marc Watters - Construction Business Blueprint

The Construction Business Blueprint #010 - The 80/20 Week for Contractors: Delegate Better, Lead Better, Earn More

• Marc Watters • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Stuck in constant react mode with a phone that never stops, sites that always need you, and no time left for the work that actually grows the business?


This episode breaks down a practical, low-tech system that helps construction owners reclaim their week and step out of firefighting, for good.


No jargon. No fancy software.


Just clear actions that create momentum fast.


We start with the daily diary method that reveals where your time really goes.


Two colours expose unplanned work, interruptions, and root-cause patterns you can fix immediately.


From there, we map founder energy so you know exactly what to keep, what to delegate, and how to delegate without dumping responsibility onto someone unprepared.


You’ll learn how to build simple processes for admin, materials, and communication so your team can operate without constant handholding.


Then we flip the 80/20 rule to protect your best hours for high-value activity: pipeline, pricing, team leadership, and controlling change properly.


We also share a proven weekly structure used from £200k outfits to £10m firms:

  • Monday: Site setups & priorities
  • Midweek: Business-building focus
  • Thursday: Site check-ins with purpose
  • Friday: Planning & prep for a cleaner week


Boundaries hold it all together, so we break down how to guard deep work, challenge fake urgency, and respond on your terms, not everyone else’s.


By the end, you’ll have a simple framework to reclaim time within days, not months and a clear path to working fewer days on the tools while making more by leading at a higher level.


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

SPEAKER_00:

So, in today's episode, we're going to talk about getting your time back. That is the first protocol that we work on inside the construction business blueprint program. So, every construction business owner that comes to me says the same thing. Mark, I have absolutely no time. They want to grow, but currently they can't even get through the week. So before we touch profit, before we touch systems or processes or adding in team, the first one we fix is you, the business owner, and your time. So as you know, you're watching this, you're a trading construction business owner. The biggest issue you guys have is time, and it's because you're constantly in that fire fighting mode, in that flight or fight and reactive mode. So you're fire fighting every day, your phone's ringing all day, emails going all day, your clients are chasing you, the lads on site are calling you about stupid stuff all the time, they need help by the hand, etc. etc. So you're constantly just in a state of reaction. You're not really getting the time to work on the business, you're not getting time to think about things, you're not getting time to actually plan, make changes, think outside of the day or the week. But the thing is, being busy will only work for so long if it works at all. You can't outwork a broken system. If it's not working now, being busy or taking on more or bearing your head on trying to take on more stuff isn't gonna work. Time must be fixed first. So with every new client, the first thing we do is a full time audit. We we look at the founder's time, we look at what they're spending their day on, what they're spent their energy on, what you're really doing daily, because what you think you're doing and what you're actually doing could be two completely separate things. We've all been there a million times, I've been there a million times myself. You have a list, the length of your arm, and you maybe get one or two things done. And what you find yourself doing, if you're still a kind of guy that uses pen and paper, is writing the exact same list on the Monday, into the Tuesday, into the Wednesday, and what actually happens is the list generally tends to get bigger and bigger and bigger as the day goes on. And you could look at that at the end of the week if you even do look at things at the end of the week and say to yourself, I got absolutely nothing done. However, you have you've been reacting to clients, you've been reacting to team, you've been reacting to whatever's going on, any issue you have. So you've been doing stuff that needs to be done, stuff stuff that's necessary, but it's because the system isn't there, the foundations aren't there, so your time and how those things are being managed is what's actually taking up all of your time. So it's not a case of we're gonna click our fingers and it's a miracle. Now all that stuff's gonna be fixed and we can go on about our day, and we're gonna have loads of time to do stuff. That's not what I'm saying here. So we're gonna look at tools, but not the type of tools that we talk about every day in the trade and construction world. We're talking about tools that you can use as a business owner in order to give yourself more time to streamline those tasks to delegate certain things, and that all starts with a simple thing, which is your dairy. So a book, a pen, paper, whatever it is you use is the first protocol that we do with anybody. Not a fancy system, not a fancy app. And by the way, never when anybody comes on this program do we ask you to invest in anything else outside of this program. Everything is provided for you. But it's the simple, small things that make the biggest impact, and what you need to work on first is your daily diary. And I've talked about the daily diary and other pieces of content before, but it is the starting point and the best and biggest tool, the one that people get the most win from, most wins from at such an early stage in their journey with us. So the daily diary is fantastic, and the weekly review on top of that, and identifies where time is wasted. I'll quickly take you through it here. The daily diary is very, very simple. You will write down, for example, in black pen exactly what your tasks are, what your things you need to do are for that day. Then during the day, in a different color pen, maybe blue pen or green pen or whatever else, you'll write in any unforeseen, any reactive stuff that has come in that day. So maybe you had a plan to make a site visit, go to the suppliers, make do whatever it is you need to do that day. Then you've had to in blue, you get a phone call, lads on site have run out of something, you're on the job everything, go and do that, write that in, write down from quarter past eight to quarter past nine. I was here on site doing X and Y and Z. Then what you'll do at the end of the day is you'll look at that diary and you'll be able to identify this is what I plan to do and this is what actually happened, and then you'll start to see, okay, wow, that's what I really spent my time on. Did I really need to do that? Why did that happen? When you start to review things like that about your time, like well, why why did we run out run out of materials that day? Why why on site did the guys run out of this? Why are they not communicating with me before it happens that they're running out of stuff? Or if it's a client that has an issue with something, what you're what you're doing there every day is you're you're identifying what these unforeseen are, stuff that you're maybe not realizing at the end of the week, that this huge list of stuff that you've done being reactive and firefighting, you're now writing that down in black and white, and you're seeing in the different color pen, the blue pen or the green pen, what is actually taking your time and taking your time away from the black stuff, which is the the planned tasks for working on the business and really doing the things that needed to happen in order to grow and elevate your business and spend your time more wisely. So, what you're gonna do at the end of that day is you're gonna review that and you're gonna write down some notes there and say on it again another colored pen and red, why that unforeseen task happened, and that's how we start to identify leaks and fix them. And I don't mean physical leaks, I mean leaks in the business, time leaks, profit leaks, issues that keep cropping up. When you do that every day and you're planning for the next day, by the end of the week, you're gonna have a list of things that you need to fix and work on. And when and these things aren't usually anything spectacular, they're just you know bad habits people have gotten into you doing too much, like overreaching for guys, holding guys by the hand, when you know you should just be you know letting guys not letting guys do what they need to do, but giving guys more responsibility and taking more ownership and you know, calling them out on things because you'll see patterns at the end of the week. You'll see patterns, the same people doing the same things, the same clans causing the same problems, things in the business you can identify where where things are going wrong, and that's where my clients get a massive benefit from as well. Because we look at that there and we review that on a daily and weekly basis, and then we fix those things, we show our clients exactly how to target and fix those leaks in the business, the blue pen, the the on the unplanned tasks. And what's important here as well is founder energy. So we look at the things that give you energy and we look at the things that drain your energy. So there's two different things in business things you like to do, things you don't like to do, things that really move the business forward are just things that have to be done, but not necessarily by you, the business owner. So that would kind of be the next step after the daily diary is your founder energy and what what you enjoy about your business and what you don't. And then we'll look for areas of delegation there. We'll look to see what tasks can be taken on by somebody else again to free you up with your time. So first we're reviewing the time, then we're looking at what you like to do, what you don't like to do, and looking for areas of delegation, in other words, giving that over to somebody else, another team member. And again, it's not a case of but when you just first come on the program or you're new to this and business or whatever else, we Jimmy's working for you on the tools and all of a sudden just dumping all your workload onto him and assuming it's all going to go well. What we'll do is then inside the program, we'll introduce systems and processes in order to map that out. So that task that you don't like to do, you don't like to enjoy, whether it's invoicing, it's pricing jobs, it's doing site visits, doing site measures, whatever it may be, doing valuations, whatever, whether that's external help or somebody internally, we structure that, we put a process, we put a system in place that is easy for somebody else to follow. And we may not give over a whole task for somebody to follow, but we may give elements over to somebody, maybe like introducing an admin at a low cost per hour rate or something else. That's gonna again give you the time then to move away from the menial admin low-value tasks and focus on the high value tasks because delegating the low value work is very, very important. And I don't know if anybody's heard before about the 80-20 principle. So we actually, as business owners, spend 80% of our time focusing on the tasks that only bring in 20% of the value, and we only spend 20% of our time bringing in the thing that actually brings in 80% of the value to the business. So our focuses are usually misaligned, and we want to flip this the script on that. We want to be spending most of our time as business owners, as founders, focusing on that 80% stuff, the stuff that's bringing in the 80% of the value, and focusing your time, doubling down on that more and more and more, and delegating that lower value stuff, that 20% stuff, like admin, order materials, invoicing, all that stuff can be really easily systemized, easily you know processed out and handed over to somebody else. Then we're gonna build structure. The next step would be structure. So we had the daily diary, we had the delegating low-value tasks, and then we're gonna build in structure to your time. So we're gonna block out key dates in your diary. And I know you're saying that's all well and good, but look, everything falls in line here. Once we work on one step, move on to the next step, you will find yourself like my clients within two weeks, their schedules completely change. They find time in their schedule here, there, and everywhere. They've they they have a quick realization that half of the things they're doing they don't need time to do. So if you're sitting listening to this thinking, oh, that's okay for him or her, look, your business isn't special, your business isn't unique in terms of there's plenty of other people doing what you're doing. I have clients that come through my doors of many different walks of life and variations of businesses, different sizes from 200k right up to 10 million, and then we tell you it's it's all relative, it's all the same. These small things that we fix in businesses are across the board, so your yours is no different. So, what we do is we block out key dates and we put structure to your day and your time rather than just starting the day off going what needs to be done first, what what far do you need to put out first? We need to actually block out your days and your weeks. So we look at like your Monday setup, like how do you spend your Monday? You know, are you best spent your time on a Monday? Going out to site, setting the lads up, making sure everything's there, making sure everybody has everything. Tuesday is like an admin day or or a pricing day or things like that. Because look, you don't need to be on site all day every day. If you do and your team are constantly underperforming, look, I'll always say that comes down to the founder, it comes down to your team and how you manage your team. But at the end of the day, what I find most problems people have with team, most founders have with teams, starts with them, the the founder and the business owner, and it's because of how you're delegating tasks, of how you're organizing guys and whatever else. So, look, but we'll get into that in a totally different video. So we're looking at like how you're structuring your week. So, a good, a good structured week, what I would always advise my clients of stepping back off the tools and stepping back and working on the business more, is having a week structured, like a Monday, a Monday, Thursday, Friday sort of work schedule. So it's like Monday would be your site visit setting up, Thursday would be your check-in on sites to making sure you're finishing off strong, and your Friday is just solely focused on planning. That Tuesday and Wednesday can be spent on however you need to catch up on your things, whatever way your business works. So whether that's pricing jobs, going out on site visits and doing whatever you need to do, going and meeting people, doing things that are going to build the business up, move the business forward. So Friday should be like a setup. Tuesday, Wednesday, or like you're you're working on the business, building the business, working on the things that need to do to move the needle. Thursdays, you're checking again with your team on your sites, so going out making sure everybody has everything you need. The reason why we do this on the Thursday, meeting with team, meeting with with uh the sites, making sure everything's going well from an operational level, is because Thursday gives you the time then on the Friday to make make good any anything that needs to be fixed. Any wrongs that need to be righted, etc. etc. We make sure that that it's done on a Thursday so Friday can be cleaned up and tidied up and done right, and then Friday's all by planning. Friday's all be planning for the following week. And this only works, guys, if you're disciplined enough to put boundaries in place. So believing in believing in the process, being open-minded about it, but putting boundaries in place. So not answering every single phone call, not going out to site the first time a client asks you to or or a team member asks you to, you know, not just running to the suppliers, asking why, putting boundaries in place and saying, Why is this happening? Why are we doing this? And no, do you know what it's not good enough, things need to change. Putting that boundary in place and not being so accessible, because the more accessible you are, the more people are just gonna you know take advantage of it too. So having strong boundaries, blocking off time. So there's no reason why if you're saying I can't get at this because the phone keeps ringing, if you're in an important meeting with a client, you wouldn't be answering the phone, you'd be you'd be giving them all your time and attention. Your time is just as important. So having that boundary in place and saying, right, I'm not gonna answer the phone here for an hour until I get this task done. After that hour, you can get back the only calls you need to. Nobody will have died, the world won't have ended or fallen apart, things will go on. So if you block off your time, like an hour here and an hour there, of what to do, then you can get back the answer on the phone and things like that. So, look, having boundaries in place is absolutely crucial because it allows this to happen. And look, like I said at the start of the video, you don't get your time back by working harder and just hiring in team or trying to just dump all your shit onto somebody else because all you're doing is passing the book, passing down problems from one person to another. So you need to build leverage, and that starts with the founder. All of your business starts with you and filters down into the team. So you need to, you know, fix your time, fix your energy, and then we move on to the systems processes and team after that. But all the book starts and stops with you initially. So every single client I can proudly say that has come through my program or came to me initially with no time. We have fixed it within not a matter of months, not a six-month process, but within a matter of days, and maybe even sometimes the odd one a week, whether the size of their business or not. But no client, positive and secure and sane, has gone on two weeks without coming back to me and saying, Wow, I didn't realise what I was spending my time on, they didn't realise how much time I was wasting on things I didn't be wasted on, because they just that they're apprehensive about letting go and making changes. But when they have somebody there accountable, stand by them with them the whole way, and they have the confidence to do so, then look, everything's possible. So most of my guys that come on the program want to take a step back from the business. They they initially probably don't see the value in not working on the tools, but when they do, when they make that change, look, most of my guys, nearly all of my guys go from six days a week on site to maybe two days a week maximum, and they're all working considerably less but earning considerably more because as soon as you spend your time again on those 80% tasks or on the 20% tasks, people will have that realization of how much value you're actually bringing to the business by taking that step back because you're taking a step back from being in the weeds, drowning the things to looking at it from a complete different perspective, a complete different level, and you're gonna have a complete different approach, and that really moves the business forward. And once your time and your energy come back, profit and everything else will fall into place. But again, like I said, it has to start and stop with you. If you're saying you have no time to fix it, that's exactly why you need to. Once you get your time, once you get your time back, you'll get your life back, and everything else will fall into place. So if you want to be like one of my clan's success stories and go from six days a week to two days a week, working less and earning more, but just aren't sure how to start, where to start, or whatever, reach out and we'll have a conversation and I can map everything out to you and show you exactly how.