The Construction Business Blueprint #028 - The 90-Day Reset That Changes Everything (CBB Event Keynote)

Stop drifting through the year and start running your business with intent.

In this keynote episode, Marc breaks down a simple but powerful Q2 reset for construction business owners, designed to move you from reactive, day-to-day chaos into structured, confident control.

The core truth is this:
 you don’t fix a business by doing more…
 you fix it by getting clear on what actually matters.

We dive into the importance of reflection, reviewing your wins, challenges, and patterns from the first quarter and why awareness is the starting point for real change.

Because without understanding what’s working (and why), you can’t repeat it.

And without identifying what’s broken at the root, you’ll keep firefighting the same problems.

Marc walks through a practical reset process:
 review → reflect → refocus.

You’ll learn how to identify what to leave behind, what to double down on, and how to set one clear headline focus for the next 90 days, so you’re not spinning plates, but actually moving forward.

Inside the episode you’ll hear:

• Why most business owners stay stuck in “operator mode”
 • The real difference between founder work vs day-to-day work
 • How to run a 30-day review and reset that actually creates change
 • The simple scorecard to assess your business honestly
 • Why focusing on ONE priority beats trying to fix everything
 • How to identify patterns behind your wins and losses
 • The five key metrics every construction business must track
 • Why guessing your numbers is costing you profit and control

This isn’t theory

It’s a practical framework you can apply immediately to reset your direction and finish the year strong.

If you’re tired of reacting and ready to start leading, this episode is your reset point.

Follow the show, share it with a fellow builder, and leave a quick review, what’s the one thing you’re focusing on this quarter?

Chapters

00:00 Q1 reflection: where are you really at?

02:00 Why awareness is the starting point

04:30 Your biggest win (and why it matters)

06:00 Your biggest challenge (and is it still there?)

09:00 The business scorecard: 6 key areas

12:00 What went well (and why it worked)

15:30 What didn’t go to plan (and why it keeps happening)

19:00 What to leave behind vs carry forward

22:00 The power of ONE focus for Q2

26:00 Founder vs Operator (the real shift)

31:00 The trap of staying busy

33:00 The 5 key metrics you must track

41:00 Revenue: why most get this wrong

44:30 Profit vs markup (critical difference)

51:00 Conversion rate: are you pricing right?

55:00 Average job value & scaling properly

57:30 Pipeline: how far ahead are you?

01:00:00 Your Q2 commitment

Transcript

Q1 Check-In And Honest Reflection

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, so look, we're three months in, believe it or not. Okay, January, February, March. We're well obviously we're just tailing off the end of March. We're coming into Easter now as well. So as we wrap up the first quarter, we're gonna take a moment to just assess our progress. For existing clients, we've done all this in the past, we've been through all these things. We're gonna we've we've laid it out slightly different this time. We always take the trend, obviously evolve everything and keep it going. But I want you to sort of ask yourself the question. We're not gonna get answers now, write anything down yet, but I just wanted you to sort of ask yourself in your head, what have those last three months been like? You know, have have they been, you know, have you progressed? Have you just sort of stayed the same? Um I know some of you are absolutely excelling in in business and in life, and that's brilliant. But every month we try to push on. Every 30 days, again, we do the 30-day review and reset. But even though you're doing well, there's curveballs always there, there's always problems that are going to be to come up or whatever else. So whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, it's always good to review, it's good to check out on what's working well, what's not working well, and we're gonna do all that today. And I've tried again, I've tried to lay it out as as simply as possible to make it a bit easier for you just to break it down in different bits and pieces. As most of you all know, again, for clients who have been with me for a long time, these this last first quarter since the new year have been very, very founder focused. So we've been doing a lot of founder work where previously, maybe last year, there was a lot more practical stuff in terms of tracking and numbers and different bits and pieces and team. The last quarter has been very, very founder focused, and there's a very good reason for that. You know, we've done a lot of work about the mission statements, your vision, where you want to go. Some of you jumped in with two feet, took it on board completely, flew with it. Some people really struggled with it, and I'm not surprised to be honest, especially if you're not used to this type of work, if you're not used to the kind of founder work or somebody asking you about vision or what do you want out of your life, you know, or different bits and pieces. That can be a challenging conversation or challenging question for yourself. Um, it's always easy to highlight the issues or the problems you're going through, but sometimes it's harder to know what we're doing, why we're doing it, what good looks like, um, and sort of giving yourself a pat in the back at times too. No matter what, no matter what's happened, the reason why we've done this sort of the mission statements at the start is because the vision is crucial. The vision you kind of need to know where you're going, you need to know why you're doing it, you need to know what the point of it all is. Otherwise, if there's no meaning behind it, you're gonna just sort of coast, you're gonna struggle, it's gonna be nothing really driving you forward. So we have to, like for everybody who's done that at the start of the year, we try to get very, very clear on where we're gonna go and more importantly why we're doing it and what that end result will look like. Um we broke it over just one thing over the whole year, and again, we always do that in here. We don't just, you know, we don't focus on 50 things at once, we always try and make one major headline focus, which is another thing that we're gonna do today. This also is a bit of a reset. Every 30 days, anyone who's not familiar, we do the 30-day review and reset, and it is a review of the last 30 days, and then we kind of draw a line under the sand again, whether it's been good, bad, or indifferent. We draw a line in the sand, we look at what's working well, what's not working well. But the good thing is, no matter how you thought the year was gonna start and how the years actually went, at this point now it's irrelevant because you either have a we can draw a line in the sand now, we can write the wrongs, we can double down on what's working well and whatever to finish off the rest of the year strong. So, although, yes, one quarter is gone already, it should be a bit of a wake-up call for some of us here, maybe coasting, here maybe drifting, who maybe wanting to do more, um, but not to beat ourselves up about it, to know that there is plenty of time left as long as we draw again, draw the line in the sand um and and make the most of it here moving forward. A bit of a Q1 reflection just to get us started, and a wee bit of a wee bit of housekeeping, I suppose. What I do is anytime we're on a call or anytime we're at an event, I would always say to anybody not to jump into the workbook and try and fill out the workbooks as we're as we're talking. There's always going to be time. I I'll I'll go through the questions, I'll go through the slides, whatever notes to try and sort of coach you through the questions on what you kind of what sort of the uh what kind of detail that we want or what we should be expecting. So try not to fill it in as we're talking. If you want to jot down a couple of things, fine, but there's gonna be time at the end after I speak for everybody to jot things down. We'll get time. I'll just watch the room, see who's still working away, and then we'll maybe take a couple of shows or a couple of questions even before we move forward. So there's always plenty of time to float the workbooks. Like I said, if you're new to this, just write down the first thing that comes to your head. Don't be panicking about getting the right answer or sharing an answer or anything else. I know it does say we bit of a cute back there about me asking questions and stuff like that, but that's I I'll know who they ask questions to and who not to ask questions to, so don't worry about that. So, question one there inside the workbook. Everyone's got a workbook there, yeah. So before we're going to do any sort of scoring or any deep review, um it's just a kind of question to get everybody get everybody started and get used to writing, and the kind of the things, the questions and the conversation get a bit deeper as we go on. So it's kind of service level at the start to ease everybody into it. The question is is there at the top in bold. What is your biggest win this year so far? You know, and it could be anything, it could be coming on, working with myself, it could be a project that you've won, it could be a conversation you had with a team member that's brought something on, it could be a change, it could be absolutely anything. And we'll try and keep it business related for now. But again, we're gonna look at you know, it could be anything at all, essentially. And then we're gonna look at so the biggest win so far this year, and then why does that matter to you? Because why it matters to you is crucial. Just that headline you know, question isn't always enough. We have to kind of have an understanding or an awareness, and you'll hear me talking about awareness a lot. We have to have an understanding as to why that's your biggest win so far, the meaning behind it, uh, and why it means something to you, why it meant why it had an impact on the business. So, uh yes, hopefully everyone everyone got something there, yeah? Yeah, dead on, happy days. And if you're still writing away right away, there's no big deal. So the next question there, again, pretty self-explanatory, just the polar opposite. Then what's been your biggest challenge this year? And again, some of this could be insignificant, it could be something that seems insignificant to some people, but again, a big meaning for you, something that's been like just keeps reoccurring. It doesn't have to be something massively impactful, it's like you know, transformational, it could be something simple, like staying on top of the invoice and they're sticking the founder time. It could be, you know, organization, whatever it is. Try and get as much detail in there as possible. And we're going to move on to then is this is this challenge still in your way right now? Because the reason why it says that is because this could be a challenge could be something that you've overcame. Um, so it could be not doesn't need to be something that has that is still there, that's still a challenge. It could be something that has happened over the last three months at the start of this year that you have overcame, but it's still worth noting down to make sure it doesn't happen again. So the next question there is, is this challenge still in your way right now? Yes, no, or partly, in other words, yeah, look, I keep kind of getting pulled into site-related stuff. This keeps kind of happening, or whatever else. I don't like to give too many examples because sometimes people just pick the example and write it down. So again, I want this to kind of come from you guys. And then the last one there is important, and again, this this again puts meaning behind everything we're writing down, so it's not just surface level shit, like, oh, you know, I wish it was better organized. Like that, that's that's a massive open open loop there. Organized in what way? What what what's what's not being organized, impacting the business, impacting you personally? And what would it look like if you were more organized or organized in what part of the business? So even try and be specific about what part of the business you're talking about. Is it team? Is it yourself? Is it scheduling? Is it projects? Is it dealing with clients? So try and be specific as possible. So that last one is kind of the most important part of that question, too. What would change if you solved it in Q2? So, whatever the challenge is, if it was solved, what would it mean to the business, or what would it mean to you? Not just like, oh, it'd be nice, but like what impact would it have? What would it change in the business if it was solved, more importantly? And if you're writing down a challenge that you've already overcame, then write in that question there, write down, you know, I I need to make sure this doesn't become a problem again because this is what it fixed, or whatever, this is what it solved. So again, we'll just take a couple of minutes and get that one jot down before we move on. And again, you'll see the difference in the answers from some of the guys who've been with me for a long time, or some of the guys who are new to this, where they're used to this way, so it's like, no, no problem. It's easy to pick both, or sometimes easier to pick the wins, and because that's seems to be more than what's happening recently. But again, um it's it's all personal, person dependent, because even the guys who are usually excel, we all have good days and bad days, and good weeks and bad weeks. Okay, so we're gonna move into the scorecard, and this is where things are gonna get kind of get more structured. So there's six key areas on the page, and I want you to score each area in uh between one and ten. And I want you to be real with yourself, no one else is gonna see this unless you choose to share it with anybody. So don't write down what you think is what good looks like. You know, write the try and be as realistic as possible. Also, if you're having a bad day or whatever, I want you to zoom out and look at this over the quarter. So if you're having a tough week or a tough day or whatever else, the phone's been going all morning. Try to remove the emotion from just the current time and think about over the last quarter. So from Christmas up to now, I want you to rate it that way. I want you to try and zoom out and think, you know, yes, I may be having a bad week, but you know what, the quarter is actually being dead on, or you know what, I've had a good week, but you know, there's a lot of things that did go on there, it could be better, etc. etc. So try to zoom out, try to be as honest as possible. Again, um, sometimes the lower the score gives us a better indicator of what we need to fix first. So, again, this is all personal and all very, very person dependent. So, try and give as much um honesty as possible. So, the queue, the six areas, and there's a particular reason why I've done the six areas for anybody who again who's worked with me for a long time knows that we always focus on the same sort of headlines. We've got five metrics today we're going to go through, but these are kind of what we deem to be the most important key areas in the business. So, Q1 overall, how did the quarter go? Revenue, did you hit what you needed? Maybe you don't know. Maybe you don't know what it is you need, so just write down you don't know if it's if you haven't got a clue, maybe it's a one then. Profitability, did the jobs make the money they should? Again, if you don't know, it's a one. If you're all over it and you're tracking everything, great. You know, then you'll know the answer to that question very easily. Delivery, jobs completed on time and to a standard. So that's kind of like callbacks, that's kind of you know everything happening on schedule. Um, and again, if you're not construction related, that's just about you know, tasks, things happening, things going out the door, you know, you're um you'll make it you'll make it transferable to yourself anyway. Team, did your did your people perform at the level you needed? And if you haven't got team, maybe everybody in here does have team. Um even for you, Nico, think about the lads that you're managing there as well. But anybody who doesn't have a big team, even if that's just a one-man ban, anyone that's in the recording, even if that's you, just rate yourself. Did you perform to the level that you needed to? And then you personally, big one, probably probably more important than the rest of them. Time, heads, space, quality of life, um, stress levels, let's rate that as well. Um, so we're just doing the scoring only for now, so just that top section. Um, and the best way to do it is just be quick about it. So we'll go ahead and take a couple minutes just to jot them down. I'll watch the room and see how you get numbered. So we're just doing the scoring element of now. So next we're gonna move into what went well and why. Okay, so it's not just good to sort of obviously we need to know what went well, but we need to know why. We need to know what the what was what was behind the winds, what behaviour decisions, actions made it happen. And a bit of psychology first. Before we fill this in, I want to go through a wee bit of like big deep into I'm quite deep into the psychology every behind everything, or is this you know psychological reason for most things and everything, and it's it's about like that I say that that level of awareness or that deeper meaning or understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it and what's working and what's not. And again, for anybody that's unfamiliar with this kind of work, this personal founder work that everyone is doing today, for some of us that's completely alien. And for some of us, we're we're used to it by an eye, some of us have been with me for a long time. That's you know, it's second nature to you, and that's great. But again, different people, different journeys, different stages. But sometimes that's why I asked the question early on. The wins are sometimes harder to spot than the problems. Often it's easier for us to then to highlight what's not going well, and it's harder to identify what is going well. And the reason for that is because the the failures or the things that are that are that are challenging us or the things that are going wrong tend to shout the loudest, and there's nobody patting us on the back for doing a good job because most of what most of the things that we do on the founder work, the founder work is quiet that we're going to move on to here now. Founder work is quiet, and the wins, there's nobody there because we're all business owners, a lot of it's like a very personal journey, and again, we're always dealing with problems, we're always putting out fires, we're always dealing with challenges and issues, so it's easier to highlight those and identify those. But the wins are usually quieter because there's nobody there patting us on the back to tell us good job, or no one, whatever else. So sometimes what went well is harder than what didn't go well. So that's that's natural again to be sitting struggling at or scratching our head again. But for some of us who have been here for longer, we're used to that now, and it becomes second nature to us. But if you're sitting there struggling with that, you know it's it's no big deal. But most of them they matter equally. What went well and what didn't go well, because we need to know what went well so that we can double down on it, and we need to know the patterns again, like I say, the behaviours of why things are going well, the structure, taking the time to do these things, the founder work, etc. etc. Um, so that we can double down on that time. What awareness actually means as well, we we're I talk a lot about awareness, uh, and I don't mean in like the fucking early-furry manifestation stuff of awareness. I talk about awareness as in that awareness to understand why things are going well and when they're not going well, understanding when, like that daily dairy thing, that's massive. That's why the daily dairy is in place for all of us. It's what what's planned, what's going well, what's not going well, and identify why those things happened. And again, for a lot of us, we're we're catching ourselves out now. We've got to that level of awareness where we're going, do you know what? I'm falling back into that trap again. I was getting ahead, I was doing this, I was doing that. That's because I was putting the time aside, I was shutting everything down, I was taking 30 minutes, uninterrupted time. I've stopped doing that. I'm getting dragged back into the site-related stuff and getting dragged back into that. But before we go deep into that, that awareness kicks in to say, do you know what? I can I can see the pattern reoccurring here, and I need a nip it in the bud before I get too deep into it again. So that's what I mean about a level of awareness. And for some of us, we we get the grasp of that straight away. For others, it's harder. Um, but that's what I talk about when I mean awareness, and that's why we don't just ask the surface level, high-level question of what's going well. We ask why it's going well. Wait, well, we you know the planet's going well, everything's scheduling's going well because of X, Y, and Z. You know, I took the time out. You know, we're having the weekly meeting every week. As soon as the week the meeting drops off, everything seems to fall apart. But it's having that level of awareness, it's knowing why things are working well, why things aren't working well, so that then we can double down on either or avoid the other. So three specific wins then from Q1, not vague. We want to look at what actually went well and why. And again, I know sometimes for some of us this is harder, but try and get something written down, especially if you're you're new in this sort of journey or program, it may seem like nothing's going well, and that's why you've reached out. So if that's the case, that's fine. For anybody who has been here for a while, again, and you're still going through a tough time or a tough week or a tough month, try and think of it again, zoomed out over the last quarter. So three wins there, and then what was behind these wins, what behaviour or decisions made them happen. So it was maybe for some of us checking in with myself every week, being held accountable. It could have been taking the founder time, taking a step back from a day, a week on site or something like that. It could have been having a meeting with the team to make sure. So for every reason why something's going well and something's not going well, there's always a reason behind it. And I want people to be able to identify that so um so that we know to have that level of awareness. So just go through those three three questions there. Win one, win two, win three. If you can only get one, fine, but try and get something written down. And then again, what was behind these wins? What behaviour or decisions or actions or patterns made it that way or made it so? So again, it could be insignificant. A win could be for some of us. I know Barr even there as well, like getting invoice outdoors, that's something that was hanging over you for a long time. You know, that even that, it's a win. It could be something that's seemingly so insignificant for one person could be massive to another. I know I've laboured that point a lot, but I don't think it has to be something spectacular here to writing down. It could be even taking time out today to come here because a lot of people again cried off. Oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, falling into the busy, the busy category again, because it's easier to do so. Okay, so we'll move on there to the next one, which is going to be easier for some people. What didn't go to plan and why? Okay, so understand the setbacks and the root causes for improvement. So even I I pick on Graham Ladd because he he's he's always getting he's always um has all the right answers at times, but it's it's good to see how even the the daily diary that paid off massively for you because even the review of that, the review was something that like not just saying the day was fucked, what why did the day go wrong? You know, identifying key things, or sometimes it's the same team member, the same problem, the same client, the same action or whatever that happened that causes the same problems time and time again. And when we're able to be identified, then we know exactly what we can fix. For that second part there, then what didn't go to plan and why? Again, it could be anything, it could be a system that wasn't there. Did you not push hard enough? Maybe everything is going well, but you got to be a bit comfortable because that's always something that can happen when things are going well, when the bank balance is healthy, when everything seems to go well, a lot of people then coast. They sort of go back into that comfort level of everything's going well, we don't really need to push anymore. But again, there's always opportunity there, there's always room for improvement, as again, Graham mentioned. Unless you're scoring yourself tens the whole way through there, there's always something else that can be done. So again, think of try and think deeper of systems, processes, team decisions that need to be made, conversations you keep putting off, and again, maybe just making a step of putting something in place or showing up more to the calls or doing the trainings or doing whatever it may be. So there's always something, you know. Again, most of the problems they say repeat, they repeat themselves time and time again. It's always the same issues. Maybe you've solved the symptom, as in, or sorry, maybe you've solved like the fire, put the fire out, but you didn't solve the issue. That's that's kind of the norm for most of us in construction or in business in general. We're going around putting out fires all the time, but once the the sort of problem is solved, we're just moving on, and then it keeps reoccurring. So again, it's about getting to the source of the issue, finding out why it keeps happening or keeps reoccurring, and then getting it nipped in the butter or putting it in place or getting something sorted. So, why is it going wrong? And again, that's what I mean by awareness. Again, not just what's going wrong, but why is it going wrong? And again, the the action, the behavior, the person, the lack of systems in place, that's what we're trying to get to here is the root cause, so we can actually start to make a fix to it. And again, we want to try and fix things at the foundation because just putting out fires or putting a plaster or plaster over the cracks doesn't actually solve the problem. Again, three things there. If we can narrow it down to three things, try and be specific as possible. What didn't go to plan and why, again, over the whole quarter, not just this week, today, this month. Look at it from the whole quarter. So from Christmas to now, what hasn't gone to plan? Obviously, a lot of us have done a lot of work there at the start of the year on the mission statements. Are you on track with that? Are you not? Did you have ambitions or something that you wanted to achieve up to this date and haven't done it yet? Get that written down there. Okay, so next one there is pretty self-explanatory as well. What do you want to leave behind? So the leave behind, Colin, what we've kind of identified there now is what's working well, what's not going well. Again, the reason why we should have the you know the behaviors, the attitudes, the actions, not blocking out the founder time, not taking time out, not having meetings, bad organization, bad structure. To give you a few examples, what they leave behind is you know, struggling to say no, saying yes to every project, jumping in the site when you're not actually needed is a common one as well. Um, falling into the trap with just being busy all the time, it's easy just to block things in and and and hide behind the busyness. It's always again harder to do that, you know, the founder work than it is to do the putting out fires work, because that's what we're all used to. And a lot of the times the busy thing is is just poor poor organization. So, again, a couple of people today had kind of double booked in terms of uh, do you know what I had to jump into this, I had to jump into that. Realistically, if you if you pull the curtain back, you don't. There's always there's always it always comes down to organization, it always comes down to boundaries as well. If if you're ring fencing something and protecting your time, generally, again, we'll talk about the founder operator stuff. The founder work and that kind of work is always the first thing to go. So they're always the nice to have. So all the things that actually move the needle in the business, like the tracking, like the systems, the processes, having meetings, they're all deemed to be nice and to have when we're when we're busy and we're flat out. Um, but when in fact we ring fence that time like we would with a client meeting or something else, we actually start to see the difference it makes and the impact it has on the business. So it's pretty straightforward, two columns. What we're gonna leave behind um and what we're gonna carry in the Q2. So again, carrying in the Q2 again is the attitudes, habits that are actually working for you at the moment. So I know sometimes it can be difficult, but turning up to the call every Tuesday night, checking in every Friday, having the conversation with myself, doing the work, blocking out the founder time, having the meeting, pretty self. Explanatory three things for each that we're gonna carry into Q2 that's working well, and what we're leaving behind that's not serving us anymore into the next quarter. Okay, so if you're still writing away just right away as I'm talking here, so your Q2 headline focus pretty pretty self-explanatory, right? And for anybody who is new to this, again, like I say, there's a lot lots of different people in the room. We always focus on one thing. It's it's it's easy to write down five, ten things that we need to focus on, and most of us do that. We always have a big list of things we need to fix. But you'll obviously see again that pattern of when you write down five, ten things that you're trying to work on at the same time, nothing really gets your focus. You never really have the opportunity, the time, the concentration to actually fix anything because you're trying to dilute your focus across five or ten different things that you're trying to fix all at the same time, so it's almost impossible. So for everything, we always pick one headline focus and we always try and make it something impactful as possible, not something surface level, like something that could be done by the end of the week. Again, we're talking about over the whole of Q2, so the next three months, we're talking about something that you want to try and focus on to get right. And again, it's about it's about your managing your expectations as well. If it's bringing a new team member in, if it's you know finally tracking every project, getting clear on your margins, when we're busy, uh as that phrase gets through around a lot, that's not something that's going to be easily achievable in a week or two. That could be something that takes three months, it could be something that takes a long time to implement and actually make the new normal uh and bring into the cadence of your of your daily routine as well. So that's why we focus on one thing. That's why we only pick one thing to focus on. So try to make it as deep as possible. Try not to just go surface level stuff, um, because again, we don't want to be writing stuff here that's going to be going to be able to be achieved when you leave here by making a phone call or something else. So a couple of headline focus examples could be to get more founder time. As in if you're five days, six days a week on site, your headline focus could be to try and block off at least one day a week to try to get into the office or try and work on the founder stuff or do this or whatever else. It could be even just blocking off a couple of hours on the week, it may not be a whole day, but a couple of hours each day that'll compound over time. It could be that hiring a new team member, it could be trying to implement a new process or a new system. For some of you who are new and you you have a plan, recently just recently received a plan or are receiving a plan soon. This is kind of this is kind of buttoned up for you. You'll know exactly what you need to focus on. Everybody in the room should. However, it's good to now ascertain what you believe should be your headline focus, and then after the conversation with me to see what that comes up differently in that conversation. And the same for people who are with me and are on a plan and are in here and have been here for a long time. It's interesting to see then the realign that focus and make sure that we are focusing on the right thing, or we need to adjust that plan, or we need to focus on something else, or whatever it may be. Because again, this can change all the time. Opportunity comes, challenges come, shit happens in general. So we're going to look at what the headline focus is. Then again, we always ask why. Why is this the right focus for quarter two? Why are we picking this one? What's it gonna mean? That next question is great. What does success look like at the end of Q2 if this goes right? In other words, if it was to try and get a day a week, you're working on the founder stuff, working on the business, then that could be finally having process in place, finally having time to catch up on X, Y, and Z, finally being better organized or having a bit more structure to your week or your or your day. And what will get in the way? So, this is about trying to identify what you believe is going to prevent you from actually achieving this headline focus. So, what will get in the way and what's the biggest risk to staying focused? So, if what's gonna pull you away from it, what are the risks here? Not having somebody there to delegate to, getting pulled into the bullshit, um, again, not being afraid to say no, having boundaries in place, try and think of what it is that's gonna prevent you from actually achieving what you're setting out to achieve here. Quite a big one, okay, for for some of us here. Um, we're gonna come back to this at the end because this this is gonna be like your Bible, okay. Now, everyone obviously we're gonna be moving on to the portals, everything's gonna be here for you. We're gonna be doing away with paper and different apps and different bits and pieces. Your headline focus is gonna be right in front of you on a dashboard every day or every minute you log in. There's an app on your phone or on your desktop. However, this is good to always come back to. It's gonna be your Bible going forward. I've got a commitment at the end and whatever else. Keeping this handy and looking over this is gonna subconsciously, if anything, bring you back to what you should be doing all the time, reading over it. So it's crucial. So try and write down as much detail as possible. Try not to have it all polished off yet. Again, I would always encourage everybody to go back over this stuff. But this will be essentially your blueprint, no pun intended, for the next three months. So, and we're gonna come back to this at the end as well. Once we go through the metrics and everything else, we're gonna come back over it and see how it changed after we've spoken about everything else we're gonna touch on here today. So, we'll take a few minutes, we'll take about three three minutes to go through that um and see how we're all getting on with it. So, for anybody in here, um any existing client, anyone who isn't new, so not everybody in here will have been on the founder versus operator kind of stuff we've been working on now again over the last three months. But there's two rules in every business, uh, and it's understanding the dual responsibilities for each one. Now, when I talk about two rules, I don't necessarily mean two people. For some of us in partnerships and stuff, yes, that's the case. But even in a partnership, we have kind of two hats that we wear, especially if we are in a trade business where we have we have to sometimes step in on the tools or whatever else, or even just sometimes if we're not and we're past that stage, we still have to then jump into what we call the operator rule. So the two rules are founder versus operator. The founder is the work that's on the business, it's the quiet work that nobody, you know, nobody's shouting for. And then the operator is the stuff that's a day-to-day. So the operator stuff stuff we spoke on at the start, the stuff that has to happen, regardless of of what or of who we've got there, what's going on. Um, it's the stuff that has to happen day to day, making the calls, answering the emails, putting out the fires, scheduling teams, just the stuff that gets the business moving every single day. But it's just sort of going through the motions. So that's that's the operator, that's the operator rule. Uh and the founder rule is obviously a much deeper rule in that. That's the work on the business. And again, the the founder work is always the quiet work. So the operator work is something that's required from our team, from our clients, from our staff, from all those guys. But there's nobody queuing up at the door they ask you to share, maybe I am, but to share what your what your profit margin was on the last project. Your clients don't care, your team don't care. That only matters to you. So that works quiet. And that's why I said earlier on, sometimes that's the work that gets pushed to the side as a as a nice to have. But again, without that, without doing that kind of work on the business, we're kind of driving blind and we don't really know when we're going through the motions and in the operator mode day to day, if the business is actually going in the direction it should be going in. So both rules are crucial. Both rules as well, obviously, have to happen. And for some of us, we are both every day, and we're changing hats all the time, we're jumping in on the tools, or we're trying to do the founder work. But again, both are crucial, but it's important to identify which role you're in and what each role sort of looks like and what you should be doing as the operator and what you should be doing as the founder. For most of us in here, we're trying to transition from that operator to founder or tradesman to business owner, if you want to call it. Um, again, both crucial, but it's it's important to identify which is which. So the founder work, like I say, the the operator work is the stuff that has to happen, the stuff that keeps the business moving. But the founder work is the stuff that actually makes tomorrow easier, if that makes sense. So it's the stuff that actually makes the big impact. The stuff that you know, like knowing your margins on the project so that knows whether you're estimating is right, that takes away the stress of you know why you didn't win a job, why you did win a job, how many jobs you're priced against, how many jobs you've won, looking at your margins, looking at all these metrics, they're the things that actually give you confidence in your approach in the day-to-day delivery of your business and dealing with team and dealing with clients. So it's kind of without that, you're you are running blind. And believe it or not, we always fall into the operator role because it's easier and it's what we're all used to. But it's important to realize and that the founder work is probably more important as the business as a whole. Balance, whether there's balance, I don't really believe in balance as such, it's just about that awareness of when you need to step into this role and when you need to step into that role, and that there's certain founder work that can that is non-negotiable that has to happen, and that's why we're going to move into that. And again, the tension there is mostly are being pulled from from both roles on a regular basis, and that's why I always talk about boundaries. Like I said, the barrier as well. It's important to ring fence that founder time. It's easy to just fall into the busy thing, but you know, you say you've blocked off your two, three hours to do that work, and then a client rings up. Oh, you wouldn't do this for me? Yeah, no problem. The answer should be no, just the way you were if you were going for a hospital appointment or doing something like that there or having a client meeting, your own time should be blocked off in that way as well, and as strict as that, and those boundaries need to be in place. Like today, today is happening. So, no, we're not booking in this, we're not booking in that because we're doing something else that time, and it can be done all around that. So, again, it comes down to that organization and again the boundaries that you're you're putting in place, and only you can do that. Before we move on to the trap, then we'll go ahead while that's all still warm and we'll go ahead and have breakfast. Um, we're okay for time, so we'll let you just get down, eat a wee bit, and then what we'll do is I'll jump back in then as you're eating there. Okay, so again, there was more stuff on there about the founder, that trap we all fall into, founder versus operator. And the trap was just to summarize it because I want to I want to move on, I don't want to labour the point either. I want to get to the metric side of thing was the most important reason why we're here. But again, that trap of falling back into what's comfortable, which is being busy, the operator work, because we're all so familiar with it, that's why we kind of always revert back to it, and especially you know, the founder work can be very uncomfortable for most of us who aren't used to it. Um so that's kind of just talking about that trap, and then again the shift then, so the shift from actually going from that founder to operator, tradesman to business owner, um, or just being being busy all the time to being planned, to being organized, being strategic. And there are guys in the room here, and even the two conversations I've had, or especially one at break, was about the fact that these these two guys in particular were people who couldn't see how there was any possibility of actually stepping back, um, and they've done it, and more so they've actually built a team. I think Darren, you for your prime example from six days a week and evenings and weekends to now they're already talked about coming away all together, um, and that's less than a year. So, again, it doesn't happen overnight. So, you may see other people's wins and everything else. Some people see other people's wins, and I've had those comments to me before about how it's it's hard to see or hard to read whenever you know you're not. But don't don't ever let that overwhelm you or get distracted because again, everybody has everyone started from a different place, like I say, different scenarios, different challenges, different things going on even in their personal life that others don't have those challenges or roadblocks in place. So it's it's important not to get distracted or you know too focused on what anybody else is doing in here, but again, take take obviously take note of it, take stock of what is actually possible. Um, but again, that's why we always have the one focus, and that one focus is personal. Um, but the shift is something that we will all eventually get to, and when it is, it's a fantastic thing. But again, there's there's proof of that in here as well, um, domestic and commercial um for most of us in the room there as well. Y metrics, we're gonna get into the the the nitty-gritty thing. It's gonna be less sort of uh workbook stuff uh and more just rating how we're going. Again, for some of us, we're gonna be sitting here high, high scores, some of us are gonna be very, very low. It doesn't matter. Um, what's important here is that we are where we are, and we can identify what stage we're at in business and where we're at, and then we know what we need to work on again, like I say. So, why metrics? When things get really, really busy, your your metrics, and I've narrowed it down to the five metrics, but when you're busy, the review stop, everything else can sort of then the meetings stop and all the founder stuff kind of falls away. But the metrics in your business and the five metrics here that we talked about at a high level, try to narrow it down to five to sort of simplify it for people. But if we're not reviewing metrics, then we are running blind. So if you're not reviewing things, you don't have actual numbers in front of you, then we're running on emotion. Uh and I always talk about removing the emotion from business. So if we're not clearly making decisions on our pricing, on our profits, on our team performance, on our schedule and organization, like I often hear people say, No, I'm not winning any work. But why is that? Why are we not winning work at the moment? Is it your follow-up? Is it your presentation? Is it cost? People always just assume I must have been two deer, or a client gives that feedback of two deer. But unless you know exactly where your margins are, then that that two deer could just be you in front of the wrong customer. Somebody who you're competing against somebody who's on a completely different uh level to you, maybe a one-man band, you've got a big team. So it's it's completely all down to the metrics. If you've got your margins and they're locked in and you know your overhead percentage and all that stuff, and it's there, and you know you can't go below that, then that's that's just that's the facts and figures of it. But without those facts, again, we're thinking on, we're acting on feeling emotion. We're we're we're we're thinking that oh, it's this person or that person or this thing or that thing. But again, without the metrics to prove the figures, then we're just we're just it's just paying the sky stuff, it's just guessing. Um and I'll often say to people, I like I think there's roughly an IK of at least 200 people a month coming through the the the funnel to work with me. And I'll often ask them, you know, financially things going well. Oh, yeah, things are going well, there's money in the bank. Well, can you can you can you prove you know what's your what's your margins? Can you show me that things are going well? They've no idea. And often the level of effort you're putting in and how busy you are isn't always reflected in the bank balance, and that's always a telltale saying, too. So the data in a nutshell removes the emotion, it removes that knee-jerk reaction of oh I'm not wanting this and that one and that, or this is a problem, that's a problem, and panicking about it. When we look at the numbers, we're making decisions on on we're making strategic decisions based on facts and based on whatever, and removing the emotion out of it altogether because the emotion causes stress. And the reason why we've been founder focused is to try and make a transition into this, and that's why I've been focusing again on that founder. Even though the founder operator we're gonna go into both, I want to make these five metrics the non-negotiable. So I want to make these new five metrics the founder work that is completely non-negotiable, and I want to make it so simple that no matter how busy your week is or your month is or your quarter is, that these five metrics are there as a minimum so that you are in the driving seat. So even if it's chaotic, we're gonna, even if these metrics need to be systemized in some way, or again, we're gonna be going big into automation today. Kev and I are also building, well, Kev is, um building an app in the background as well, uh, even beyond what we've started here today, or what we're gonna show you today, in terms of the tracking and automating all that tracking. So these five metrics need to be a minimum for everybody. So, again, no matter what stage you're at in business, these need to be a minimum, need to be reviewed on a on a on a monthly basis as a non-negotiable. Let's go into the five key metrics. So, from today, your monthly check-in is going to be on on the portal, and it's going to be kind of asking you roughly in and around these these five questions. These are the five metrics that you're you're on about here, and your job as the founder to know them. And before we go into them deeply on each one, I just want to see a gauge in the room where everybody is kind of at the minute. And I know I know the answer to most of these questions, by the way, but it's good just to see it in front of you of what you think you know and what you actually know and whether you can actually prove it or back it up. So it's important there. So we're just going to go through those five metrics. Again, there's a wee bit of a guide here for anybody who wants to go back on this and read through it when I'm not talking you through it. But it's pretty simple, it should only take a minute to figure it out. Do you track revenue month by month? And I mean, but I mean by track, I don't mean like, well, yes, sometimes could be you kind of sit down and work it out at the end of the month. Yes, means you are tracking it live, so all the invoicing is being tracked, everything, all everything's covered, you're on top of it all at all times. Do you know you your gross profit margin and not markup? For some of us, again, they're new to this. Markup and margin, you know, you'll be scratching and saying, is that not the same thing? But it's it's not. Do you know your gross profit margin on every single project? Do you know what your minimum is that you're striving for? Do you know what that profit is after overheads, after everything's paid out the door? Yes, no, sometimes as it maybe do you sit and work it out after a job's done. Do you know your lead conversion rate? So anybody who's not used to that type of language in this game, lead conversion rate again can just be jobs that you've priced. So not everything's like a lead. So if you're commercial, you wouldn't be talking about it in leads, you'd be talking about you know price and work. But do you know how many jobs you're pricing and the ratio of how many jobs you've priced against what you've won? And are you reviewing that on a regular basis and then that's having a conversation then around your estimating? Why do we not win that work? Unpopular opinion, most of the time it's not price. I know a lot of you will disagree with that, but it's not. Usually it is either a relationship, how you've submitted it, the information that you've gathered, the price from, your pricing structure. There's so many other things that you need to get out of the way. First, it could be wrong before you blame its price. And even then, if it is price, some some of those races to the bottom are races you want to lose. A different type of clientele you want to be working with. Do you know your average job value? This is important because I often hear people talking about the number of jobs. I've got five jobs booked in, I've got four jobs booked in. But are they four or five 100k projects or are they four or five five K projects? So we need to know the average job value. And again, we're going to go into these in more detail of increasing your job value and how it impacts your business. And then do you know how many weeks or months or whatever uh years of work you have booked in, depending on where you're at? So for the domestic guys, again, we're gonna go into the minimum requirements and everything else, but just to write it down there, do you know how many weeks or months of work you have booked ahead? Um, and we'll quickly jot those down. So we'll just take a minute to get those uh booked uh written down and we'll move on. Who was just a show of hands there, rather than getting into each and every individual person, who was hands up who was a yes for most of those? And hands up who was a no for most of them. Then on that's even even some of those answers surprised me. So there you go. But look, that's great to see that the mix in the room as well. Um, and it's funny how the ones who had their hands up second were guys who are relatively newer to working together, so and it's good to see that the guys who are, except for Connor, he's field. But um blame Nico on that one, move on. Monthly revenue, then we'll move on to this. Is not the the first metric, monthly revenue. So we've all just turned to that monthly revenue page. And again, we're not gonna ask you to work anything out here an hour, we're just gonna score it all as we go through, and then we're gonna reflect on it. But there's a good question at the bottom of every one of those pages what needs to change to move this number in Q2. Monthly revenue is kind of the easiest one to start on. Total amount invoiced in a month. Okay, so we're gonna talk about total amount invoiced, not total amount of monies received. Um, and the reason for that is because the usually for most of us, the work that is now, this isn't an exact sense, you can you can change this to suit whatever business type of business you have, but as a general rule of thumb, we're gonna talk about the the number, the amount that's been invoiced every month, because usually most of us are working 30 days or 60 days or whatever in advance so uh or behind. So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna track what's been invoiced that month. That's usually what's current. The work that's been done on the month that's invoiced that month, or it should be at least. I know some of us, that's another whole topic here we've got on here, but the reason why we track what's invoiced that month is that's because what's usually accurate of what was actually work that was carried out that month. So that's why it makes it more accurate than just monies received because there's late payments, other bits and pieces. So, for the purposes of tracking this, we're going to look at the monthly revenue metrics and we're gonna track it month by month. So most of you know your your your yearly turnover, you know, most of you is waiting until you go and see the Alexicarin at the end of the year and find out, you know, right, what how do we do it at the end of the year? But again, that's that's not good enough. We should be going primed with this information, we should be going knowing exactly what we're what we're what we're heading into here, what that that's gonna that conversation is gonna be at the end of the year already. So we need to track it month on month. It's not just enough to do it on quarter or whatever else, because when we when we view things on a monthly or more regular basis, even if you're a smaller business, you could do it weekly too. Um, but monthly is a minimum as a rule of thumb for everybody in here. Uh and it's because then you need to be able to identify patterns. And that's another thing. Quiet months shouldn't just be accepted. I often hear as well, maybe not clients, but other people outside of the program or mentorship, speaking about ah, this is always a quiet time of year. Even for anybody who should be seasonal in here, it should be Dan. But like you're busy 12 months of the year, like your outdoor work, you know, there's not really any reason why anybody in here should be seasonal as such. Yes, Christmas and sometimes when everything shuts down, fine, that's fair enough. When when literally sites are shut, whether you're commercial or domestic, well, different mixing room, as I say, so trying to make it applicable to everybody. We should be able to plan for those months. But what happens is that we identify that there's quiet months and then we just accept that that's the way it is. We don't sort of build up to it and try and make certain months of higher revenue than others to make up for it, or we don't actually try to go out of our way to fill that quiet period with work. So most of the time, we've just that's how it's the this we've just sort of fell into things, and there's certain times a year of quiet, but we don't ramp up our market and we don't try and reach out, we don't try and do whatever, we just accept that it happens. So that's just something to note there that I like quiet months shouldn't just be accepted as one of those things that it is what it is. We should be again reviewing that and then trying to change it. The next one is invoicing on-time. So this only works, well it doesn't only work, but this is most effective when you are invoiced non-time. So again, not gonna point anybody out, but there's people here who have invoiced even 12 months behind, there's months and weeks and whatever else behind where they should be, and that leaves you in a very stick, sticky situation at times. But also then it it it messes up this figure. You know, it's not accurate. So it's always important, no matter how small the work is or how big the work is, to have that regular cadence or get into that rhythm of as soon as something is complete, invoice it out. Um, for some of us that's completely non negotiable and it should be. So metric one there, just circle there. Where are you at right now in terms of tracking your monthly revenue? One to two, three to four, five to six, seven to eight, nine to ten. So nine to ten means that this is just it happens live as you go. Everything goes out on time. You're so strict on it. One to two is you do, you do absolutely nothing. You just kind of go through the motions every day, every week, until you get to the end of the year and you sit down with your accountant and say, Well, how'd that go? So we're going to score it, your current number, and then we're going to write down our Q2 target. So you can write away there as I'm talking. The Q2 target, we're going to pencil in there as well. So if it's a one to two now, do you want it to be a five to six, a seven to eight? And what needs to change to move this number in quarter two? Maybe you don't spend the time tracking, maybe you have somebody who you don't check in with. Maybe you could be delegating this to somebody, maybe you don't have anything in place at all. So write down then what needs to change to actually move this number in quarter two. Okay, so the next one, gross profit margin. And again, might seem straightforward for you, and what I've even done is broke it down there. But a lot of people, when I ask about margin, markup and margin are not the same things. People who have been with me again for a while, and I said every slide, but um I want to make I want to differentiate the two the two things here. Often I'll hear somebody pricing a job, and even Graham, we had this conversation about pricing a job at cost. So every job, you need to be first of all, before you be priced before you're pricing anything, you need to be very clear on what your overheads are. And we always work out our overheads as a percentage of our turnover. And again, if you're if this all sounds a bit mental, uh don't worry about it. It's all written down here, and again, we'll go through it all. So if you're not familiar, you will be familiar with it very soon. But being clear on your overheads is crucial. And what I'll always encourage everybody to do as well is to factor themselves in, whether that is the case now or not, factor yourselves in as a cost. I hear people still who are like, I don't take a wage, but they live in and out of the business or dipping in and out of the business in bits and pieces. But you should all be paying yourselves a salary of some kind, and that should be factored into your overhead percentage. And because if you're not, you know, even if that's a fraction of the overhead or of your salary, they'd be factored into overheads, because whenever you're taking those founder days out, those one or two days, again, some of us have moved on to six or seven, their wages need to be completely covered. The point of that is that whether you're physically on site, on the tools or not, your wages should be covered. And what's the point in being in business if none of us are are paying ourselves? And the issue without factoring yourself in as an overhead is that then you're just digging into the profits. So essentially, what you're doing is your profit is just paying your wages. So essentially, all you're doing for your business is just covering your wage, and you might as well go and work for somebody else down the street if all you're doing is running a business to just make a wage every month. And for some of us who are listening to that might think that's insane. I can tell you now, for 90% of the industry, that's what's happening, no matter the size of business. So it's important that's the one that always catches everybody out. So your new zero. Another thing we want to talk about here is about just before we move on to that, is your is your new zero, about revenue, revenue in the bank as well. We need to we need to factor in if you're looking at your bank account as well, at times, and I just wanted to throw this in as a as a buy-the-by on this slide. Zero should the your zero in your bank shouldn't be zero, it should be that number of overheads for say a minimum of three months. So if your overheads per month are are 10k, for example, if you're turning over 100k and your overheads are 10%, your new zero should be about 30k. So that should be the revenue that you should be looking at your bank and saying, right, that's made zero. If you're nearing that sort of figure, then that's that's when you should be you know kicking into action. Some of us see the bank account and get comfortable with there's plenty of money there, we don't need to push, don't need to do whatever. Then that money slowly disappears on one thing or another or a bill or something that happens, and then we all start panicking and we all go into that that vicious cycle of peaks and troughs and picks and troughs of working and panicking every every so often based on the bank account. So we need to figure out our new zero. The other thing, then that the new zero again about the salary as your overhead, is that also needs to be the same for pricing your projects. First of all, we'll talk about margin and markup. Margin and markup are not equal. People always say to me I price a job and then I put a 20% markup on it, but markup is not profit margin. Again, you've got overheads and not 20%. So usually when you dwindle it all down, I have clients here from as little as 7% overheads right up to 35% overheads of their turnover. So they need to be adding 35% on to every project at a cost to be breaking even. So that again is your new zero. You need to figure out what your overhead is as a percentage of your turnover, which that calculation is there, and then that's your new baseline. So when you're pricing a job at cost, not pricing a job with I pay Jimmy£100 a week, but I'm gonna sell them out at£150 a week, and then the materials I'll add 20% here or 30% there, that gets messy. There's no exact sense to that. And there's as I say, there's thousands of ways you could price jobs, but the only effective way to price a job with absolute certainty is if you factor in the true cost of that project to your business, which is the cost of your labour, the direct cost of your labour to you, including any CIS or anything else, then the materials, any travel, whatever for bigger guys, flights and whatever else, we could take that as an estimate, so many flights per week or whatever else. If we factor that in as the cost, then you add on your say 10-20% overhead figure, that should break even, and then you're into your margin. And when you're clear on what that margin is, whether it's 10%, 20%, 30%, you know that after that job is complete, that's the money that should be in the bank after everything is paid. Because often I'll have a conversation with guys and they'll say, Oh, I'm getting 30, 40% profit on every project, but they're not, they're getting 30, 40% markup on every project, and that's why that 30 or 40% after they do that 100k job isn't in their bank account, and they're scratching their heads wondering where the money is. Why have I not got 30, 40% of 100 grand in my bank after I finish that job? I've tracked it and it's all making sense because it's not 30, 40%, it's 30, 40% minus your overheads. So we need to be very, very clear on that. Because again, I'll often have that conversation where I'm getting 30, 40%, but the money's just not there. I don't understand why. And I had that conversation with a client, they're not here today, and we actually realized that there was only after his markup, the margin was only sitting at about 5% because his overheads were so high. And that 5% to me is not enough of an insurance policy on your project because as we know, things go wrong all the time, and sometimes we're not always on top of our variations and our changes and different things like that. Our jobs run on, we slightly underestimate it. That five or ten percent is not enough. Yes, maybe on a you know, some guys are on big on projects here, five, ten million, five percent of five, ten million is a lot. We need to be very clear on that. We need to be very clear so that we're not having that mental battle ourselves wondering why that 20 or 30 percent markup isn't in the job in the bank account there as a as a balance. So knowing the gross profit margin is is absolutely crucial, and that needs to start with knowing your percentage of overhead. So, what is your percentage overhead per your per year turnover? And the calculation is there, it's pretty straightforward, it's it's not difficult. And again, this needs to be reviewed on a regular basis because your overheads can change. You could bring in admin, you could you could bring on a workshop, you could whatever it may be, so that's gonna be adjusted all the time, and that rate's gonna change all the time. Or if you're coming completely off the tools again, that needs to be paid for, so your overheads are gonna increase, and there's ways that we can factor that in that in then, and we either want to increase your margins, increase your volume, or do one or the other, but we need to be very clear on what it is first and foremost. Right, okay. So the next one there is is lead conversion rate. Lead conversion rate again, like I said, if you're not familiar with that language, it's just essentially how many jobs you're winning against what you're pricing, and then it's it's having to really look at that in detail. That's again we just touched on there with Anthony, is you know, why this is happening. A conversion rate for projects should be in and around 50%. So you should only be winning about 50% of the projects that you're actually pricing. The sweet spots around 40 to 60. If you're winning more than 60% of your quotations uh and you're in high demand, for some of you are winning all of them, you're you can you have the capacity there to increase your prices, you're too cheap. If you're sending out every quote and you're winning every job, you're definitely too cheap. Even if you're in high demand and you think you know that's why I'm winning more because I'm fantastic and there's nobody like me, um, fair enough. But again, if you're in that high demand, you have the position and the authority to be able to raise your prices and people are prepared to pay for them. Because if you're booked a year in advance or whatever else in the domestic side of things, then you can absolutely afford to um increase your prices, and you're definitely playing it playing it too small. In terms of the commercial side of things, then the lead conversion rate as well is very similar, you know, it goes it goes on that scale as well. If it's very low, 15 to 20 percent again, it doesn't always the first the first reaction is always we're too dear. But unless we're very clear on those numbers and clear on those figures, and we can actually say that at certainty and think, but what can we do here? Because we can't go below this figure, otherwise we're going to be making a loss. So we need to be very clear first and foremost. Are we pricing the job correctly? Is our overhead figure right? Is our margin? You know, what are the figures? As soon as we've got that stumbling block out of the way, it is you know getting feedback from clients, why we're why we're not winning work. Even when I was commercial, I didn't always go with the cheapest price. Um, it usually was always stemmed around relationships and reliabilities, and especially in the commercial game, like I say, a lot of the times these jobs are won before the price is even submitted. And nine times out of ten, most of the prices that the contracts managers and people are getting their QSs are check prices. You're being asked to price a job to compare it against somebody else. Sometimes you're even getting misinformation, you're getting wrong information, you're getting you're getting whatever to kind of throw you off the scent. So commercially, especially the relationships are most important. And also like that, there's certain projects that you're competing against. That I've had this position many times where you think you want those big massive projects, but realistically, when you do the numbers and you're looking back on it, look at the stresses caused, look at the margins you're making. Maybe we're not, maybe we're not, maybe we're not. Shouldn't we be pricing five million pound projects for these guys who are absolutely sobby busting us? Maybe we should just be going for the smaller stuff because plenty of smaller stuff that you have done again that was had higher margins, a couple of good projects there. So it's doubling down on not just what you think you would like to win, but what you should be willing to gain based on the margins, based on the figures, based on the level of effort, more than anything else. But again, tracking how many jobs you're pricing against how many jobs you're winning and that conversion rate needs to be known so then you know where your pricing is or if there's a problem with your estimate or how you're showing up, or there's a conversation that needs to be had. Like if you're just constantly pricing for the same client over and over and over again and winning nothing, you need to have a conversation, just come out from it and say, What is the point here? Why are we losing this work? And it's not hard to find out in this game who's winning the work and why they're winning the work. So having that conversation is crucial. Because again, we don't know, we don't know to have that conversation, we don't know what there is to fix until we have that figure of how many jobs we're pricing against, how many jobs we're um winning, etc. etc. So, just quickly down the bottom of that page there, then what is your conversion rate currently of estimates or sales or whatever it may be? Uh, where are you right now? Where would you like it to be? And we always talk in percentages, by the way, um, and what needs to change to move this number in quarter to. If the answer is you don't know, write down you don't know, and then that's what we need to talk about. Okay, so again, that's just what Barry's saying there, the average job value, um, something we never usually look at. And there's a simple sort of thing here that if you're going to increase the the job value and again your margin, uh, you could actually sort of do there's either two types of work you can do. You can either do high high volume or high margin. That's kind of the two arenas you've got. And you can either do shitloads of work with low margin to try and get that figure, you know, the money built up in the bank, or you can just do high margin work. Um, and again, there's more effort doing the high volume, obviously, than there is doing the high margin. But again, to know that we need to figure out all the other things on the previous pages. So each page kind of lends itself on to the next one. But again, there's a simple calculation there about the average job value. Because I often hear clients as well say to me, like, oh, we've got five or six jobs booked in, or we can do we can do four jobs per month, like our team to do four jobs per month. But that's just just tracking the number of projects isn't an exact sense because is that four small projects or is that four large projects? Like, what's the value? So there's usually a ceiling per month that your business could probably take on in actual revenue of work. So looking at that average job value is important because you need to look at like what average job value are you pricing, are you winning, and again what those margins are as well. So, again, important one to track. It goes into a lot of detail there. Um, just run out of a bit of a time here, so I'm gonna try and speed it up. But yeah, the average job value is something that most of us don't don't do, uh, or track that figure, and then we can we can look at what we can actually fit in to our revenue per month or per quarter, and that's where our targets come from as well. So, just quickly there, again, then average job value. Do you currently track your average project value? Um yes or no. And if it's no, do you want to be, or what do you what do you need it to be? Um, and again, this is all about scalable scalability as well. When you've got sort of like a a lot of the times when you've got a higher job value, there's usually less effort required, less you know, higher margin as well. So, again, the output versus output or input versus output and all that carry on, uh all comes into account. So just quickly jot that down and we'll move on to the next one. Again, so there's then the last one there is the pipeline moving forward. And there's two types of people in the room, like I say, domestic and commercial. Some of you do both as well. So, like I said, about the revenue, we're gonna look at or sorry, the pipeline book again, that all it all works hand in hand. The number of jobs we're pricing, the number of jobs we're winning, the value, the average value of those projects all sort of tells a sign of how much we need to get booked in. So each one of these metrics sort of leads on to the next, uh, and they're all crucial. Again, they all lead on one on to the other, and kind of without one, the other one doesn't really work, you know. So it kind of all needs to work hand in hand. That's why these five are here. That's why we've selected these five. So the pipeline forward book. So I would say, as a rule of thumb, domestically, two months would be an absolute bare minimum of work booked in. The target would be at least six months for commercial. I would like most of the guys in the room here to be sitting with, like I say, most of us are pricing here in 2026 jobs for 2027, 2028 at times in the bigger commercial stuff. So realistically, if you're sitting here in 2026, you should kind of have your year booked in and your pricing for next year, or even in the later next year. Uh, I know some of us domestically are even booked up nearly into 12 months in advance, so you can see the different scale of things there. But again, that's where we need to sort of be looking ahead and not waiting until that month or that quarter and going shit with nothing here. We need to be sort of forecasting this and mapping this out and planning it. And again, there's all things like this inside the resources we have to enable you to do this, and that's what we should be sitting down reviewing as we're meeting, you know, having that weekly meeting or having that fortunate meeting. These are the kind of figures we need to be looking at to give us that foresight so that we're not panicking when it doesn't come in. So, again, there's a great guide there in that of how we're working it out and doing whatever we're doing. So, in terms of your pipeline or your forward booking and how far you're looking ahead, are you currently tracking that? Are you tracking what you've got? Are you are you aware of it? Are you tracking it? Um, you know, looking into the margins, are you clear on your margins of what you've got, what your revenue is going to be over the next six months, what your revenue is going to be over the next 12 months, what profit margin you're expected to have. Do you kind of have all that mapped out, or are you just looking again job to job? Are you looking at right we need to get a job in here, we need to get a job in there? You're not worried about the value, but realistically, you should be saying to yourself, okay, our average revenue we need here is 100k or 200k. So, how many projects do we need at that? So, if we book in one at a hundred, great, then we need two sort of 50k projects to fill in the gap, or are we just kind of pricing anything, hoping for the best and taking whatever we can? So, it's kind of two scenarios there. So, just quickly jot that one down. Are you tracking currently your pipeline? Are you actively going and seeking a specific value of project, uh, a specific duration of project? Do you know what your company can currently handle in terms of revenue per month? What your team can actually handle? Are you baiting off more than you can chew, or are you leaving yourself short? So, great question there. And then are you current are you tracking it at the minute? What's your current number is, Q2 target, and what needs to change to move this in quarter two. For most of us, it's just start tracking it and get it done. So we'll wrap it up on this one and let Kev do his thing here. So just a wee brief before we actually dive into this one. This Q2 metrics board is going to be great. It's kind of the most important part. We have kind of all the evidence down there on the pages beforehand. This is kind of like a summary. We're going to look at what our current figures are, and if it's you don't know, write down you don't know. Even if you're a Q2 target, you don't know what it should be, just write down you don't know. And if you're tracking it, yes or no. And again, if you want to score it even, so if it's at a zero or it's a whatever, just roughly what your score is. The answers are on the previous pages you've filled out. And then what I want everyone to do as well is you want everybody to commit their to your tracking day or how you're going to track your numbers, or if you haven't got anything in place, just write I need something or whatever. So I want you to fill that in. What your current figures currently are if you know them, some of you in the room will, some of you don't. If you don't know and you thought you knew, but you don't know now off the top of your head, looking or what it was last month or whatever else, then you don't know. Let's just be real about it. So write down the figure if you have it. If you don't know, write down you don't know. That's a telltale sign itself. Write down the target if you have one. If you don't know, again, write down you don't know, and then that's where you need to have a conversation with myself. And then the weekly tracking with them. So I want you to try and commit to this. Again, this is going to be something that we're going to be putting in place anyway, but I'm going to be taking everybody through what the requirement is, how to work them all out if we're not working it out, so that everyone can do this comfortably. I'm not going to ask us of somebody without showing them the steps of exactly how to get to what they need to get to in order to achieve it. So don't panic on that sense. So again, just write that down there as I'm talking through it. Your monthly revenue, your gross profit margin, your current conversion rate of estimates, your average project value, and your pipeline in terms of weeks, what you have booked in there and what you would like what it would like to be. So if it's two months and you want it to be six months, if it's a year or whatever it may be. So get it written in there, and then your tracking day. Let's get that booked in. Or if you genuinely don't know, just put something down there and we'll work towards it. What you'd like it to be. Think of what day right now might suit you. Or if it's absolutely nothing, then again, that's something we need to work on depending on how deep you are into the program. Don't really worry about the last one if you're not sure. I'll track my numbers in spreadsheet zero notes up. Again, we're going to be doing, we're going to be building our own software into this as well. So then the last page, we'll keep keep working away at that, sorry, as I'm talking. Just fill them in. The last page I'm going to leave to yourselves, which is just that Q2 commitment. And I'm going to, if I had time today, I would have gone through it today. But I want you to keep this sort of neat and tidy. I want you to use the other bits of um the other pages to do your rough work, and I want this to be kind of a neat thing, and this needs to be somewhere where you can be reminded of it all the time. You know, leave it in the office, look at it on a regular basis just to sort of remind yourself of where your focus needs to be, and that'll give you an awareness of whether you're actually drifting or you're staying on track as well, or if you need help with it. Most of the time, everybody in here you may need you may need help staying on track, accountability, and that's why you're all here. But again, having that awareness to be able to know by April if we're still on track, by May, if we're still on track. Uh and if we're not, we need to be reaching out and asking the question. So just to show of hands then, how many of you is you're gonna knew those figures off by heart? There are thereabouts. Anybody else any questions on that? No? Happy enough?