The Construction Business Blueprint #030 - The Real Reason You Can’t Step Away From Your Business

Most construction business owners aren’t struggling because they’re lazy…

They’re struggling because they’re busy doing the wrong things.

In this episode, Marc breaks down why so many builders feel stuck, constantly firefighting, always on site, and unable to step away from their business… 

No matter how big it grows.

The problem isn’t effort.

 It’s inefficiency.

We dive into:

• Why being busy doesn’t mean you’re productive
• The hidden time drains inside your business
• How poor planning and communication cost you money
• Why rework and lack of clarity kill your margins
• The real reason you can’t step away from your business
• A simple 3-question framework to fix inefficiency fast

Most builders don’t need to work more hours…

They need to fix what’s slowing them down.

If you want more time, more control, and a business that doesn’t rely on you every single day, this is where it starts.

Chapters

00:00 Why most builders feel stuck

00:33 The real goal: time, profit, control

02:18 Busy vs efficient (big mistake)

02:30 The problem with chasing turnover

04:00 Why big businesses still struggle

05:00 Where inefficiency actually comes from

05:08 Time wasted (driving & poor planning)

06:25 Rework: the biggest profit killer

07:42 Communication chaos explained

08:50 Why unclear instructions cost you time

09:57 The owner doing everything problem

10:30 Why you feel stuck in the business

10:36 The 3 questions to fix everything

11:45 Why you shouldn’t fix everything at once

12:30 How to identify your biggest problem

13:37 Your action step for this week

Transcript

Why Efficiency Beats Hard Work

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another episode on the construction business blueprint YouTube channel. This is the only channel for trade and construction business owners to get advice on their trading construction business and real implemental advice that you can actually take away and put into your business straight after watching one of these episodes. So we talk about real advice in the real world, not any of the random metrics or you know hype stuff. We talk about the facts, the figures, and the reality of things, and I'm going to show you hopefully or try and give you as much value as possible so you can actually watch something here, learn something here, and again take it away and implement it in your business specifically right away. This week's episode, we are going to talk about how to make your construction business more efficient without working more hours, because the key word there is efficiency. I've been inside businesses throughout my career in this industry for over 20 years working in businesses turnover modest figures, right up to a million, 10 million, 16 million, 20 million, even 60 million turnover companies. And one thing was familiar, or there was one common theme throughout the whole process or throughout every company, and it was that the owner still couldn't take a week away from the business without, you know, still couldn't step away, still firefighting every day, still heavily involved, no matter what the size of the team was. And it's not because they weren't working hard enough, it was because they were confusing being busy with being efficient, and those two things are not the same. Efficiency is everything. So today I want to show you how to actually make your trade or construction business more efficient, how we're going to streamline things. And I'm not going to talk about adding more things to your to-do list, okay? Because that would be counterproductive. For any client that comes on board, it's the first protocol we work on. A lot of guys come to me and they will say, How am I going to have the time to do this? Well, inside the blueprint, that is the very first thing that we work on with every founder, every business owner is what they're spending their time on and how to make their time much more efficient to free up the hours to actually be able to work on the business. When we say work on the business, I mean work on the things that actually make a big difference or a big impact in the business that can eventually build you to a point in time where you can step away and delegate and let other people run things without you. I'm going to talk about the stuff about stripping back the stuff that is slowing you down and making the business harder than it needs to be. So we'll get stuck straight into it.

Vanity Metrics And False Success

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Being busy is not the same as being profitable. That is something that a lot of people don't understand. So, first things first, I want to talk about something I see constantly with trading construction business owners, and it is it is the obsession with vanity metrics. We had one of our clients in here for a podcast just this morning, and he touched on this as well. You know, the vanity metrics of turnover. Always talking about a turnover figure. I always have guys talking about the number of men they have on the books, the size of the jobs they're doing, the turnover figures, the number of vans on the road, you know, full even full order books, those things feel good, they feel like progress, but here's the reality. Again, I've seen companies doing 10 million in turnover, losing money hand over fist. I've seen business owners doing double that amount of turnover, with 20 staff, full order books, really healthy, vans everywhere, look like they're taking over the whole country and they're still checking their bank account every Friday morning or on a Thursday night in a blind panic, hoping that someone is going to make a payment so that they can actually pay their lads the next day. That is not success. That is a nightmare dressed up as success. The truth is, I would much rather run a business at a half that size or a fraction of that size. Say taking a 60 million turnover company, I'd rather run a half a million turnover company with 50-60% profit margin than having to deal with the stress and the anxiety of running a company with you know 10 million and making really low margins, if at all, even making a profit, but having to deal and having to put the input in with such little reward. Because again, the goal is not turnover, the goal is not to be busy. That's never an issue for anybody in this industry of being busy. If it is, that's a totally different conversation. But this is a high demand industry. You ring any good, reputable tradesman right now to do work for you, and you see how long it takes them to actually become available. We are in a market now that's completely changing. Construction business owners have the run of the market. We are going to be taking over the likes of you know those high-paid jobs and those really good jobs like teaching doctors, everything like that. Construction business owners are going to be at the top of the tree very, very soon because of that supply and demand and the skill shortage out there. The goal is not turnover. The goal is time, profit, and control, which are the three pillars of the blueprint. Time to spend where you choose and not fire fitting. Profit that actually justifies the effort that you're actually putting in and control over your business and life, control over the team, control over everything that's going on, including your time and everything that all sort of falls into that. Most trade and construction business owners don't fail because they can't get to work. They fail because they are bleeding time, money, and energy, and they have no control over their business, no control over their clients or anything else. So let's talk about where the inefficiency inside your construction business actually lives because it's not always obvious when you're inside it and you're stuck in there every single

Where Inefficiency Actually Hides

SPEAKER_00 5:08

day. Number one, if you're a small business, I often see this all the time: time wasted left, right, and centre. One could be driving time. Every hour that you spend behind the wheel of your van is an hour that's costing you money and producing absolutely nothing. Same as the guys that are travelling back and forth to building merchants all the time due to lack of plan and everything else. I know that sounds harsh, but think about it. Your guys are not getting paid to drive back and forth to plumbing merchants or building merchants to get free coffee out of the machine and have a talk about the football at the weekend and all that shit. You're paying them to deliver results on site. So every journey that doesn't need to happen, every trip to pick up materials that could have been delivered or planned out better, that's money going down the drain. You have to think to yourself, could I plan better? Could I go and get the materials? Could I have the materials delivered to site? The answer is yes. I don't care how reactive you are. I have clients here in facilities management that are literally reactive all the time. They hold stock, they plan out their day very, very carefully. There's maybe one trip to the merchants in the morning, and unless there's something urgently needed, again, what always happens is if you've ever got a guy work guys working in powers, they both go to the merchants together because sure, why not? It's a good crack. Any opportunity to get away from site, they'll take it. The second one there is repeat work and rework. That's another massive one. These are facts, but they're also just guidelines, just examples, they're not just the the the be all and end all. But repeat work and rework. This one is probably the single biggest profit leak that I see inside trading construction businesses. When a job gets done and has to be done again, or there's variations or changes coming up on site, and either the team aren't versed on what the scope is and they're doing additional works at the request of the client, or they're uncovering things and they're having to put in more effort and more longer hours on site, and you're too busy to stop, acknowledge, ask for more money, think about it, or train the staff to know, right, guys, this is the scope of works. Anything outside of that is a variation or a change. Don't take instruction from the client. When the client does ask you to do something, this is the response. Without training that into your guys, and without having that awareness and without having the time to actually spot these things, then you are literally pissing money down the drain. You're literally throwing money away, doing additional works and not recouping any of the costs. That is that is financial suicide and wasting time as well in business. So look, I understand as well that mistakes happen, and that's just the nature of this game. Mistakes happen, things change, but when reworks or additional works are happening regularly without you know tracking them or keeping cost of it, that's not bad. Look, that's a system problem. It's unclear instructions, it's no standard of how a job was done, it's not clear communication on starting a job, what needs to be done, what shouldn't be getting done, or poor communication with the client and expectations of what they thought they were getting and what you quoted. So that leads us naturally on the third one, which is communication chaos. How much time is lost or spent in your business talking over the same thing all the time because people aren't clear on what they're supposed to be doing, or they claim

Rework And Scope Creep Leaks Profit

SPEAKER_00 7:56

they're not clear on what they're supposed to be doing because you said you've explained it to them a million times, but how you explain it to them, how is it being communicated? So for every one of those interruptions that you're getting, every phone call, every WhatsApp, every visit to site to explain something again, again, that is draining time, draining energy, and pulling you out of the work that actually moves the needle. That that most of those times as well that's getting taken are unforeseen. You don't plan for those phone calls, you don't plan for those site visits, and the fix isn't working harder. The fix is setting clear standards and communicating them properly from the start. Well, how do we do that? It's very simple. You know, make sure all communication is in writing, use resources like site auto pros, take photographs, send explanations, give breakdowns. I remember being in a in a in a van with a client who we were putting a lot of stuff in place and he couldn't understand why he was constantly having to repeat himself and constantly having to go through things over and over again and why the plans weren't really getting stuck to. I was in the van with him for five minutes and it was around the morning time, and his phone rang, and there was one of the guys on site, one of his lead guys, and he asked, right, what's happening today? Blah de blah blah, whatever happened. My client then proceeded to give instructions to his guy, to his crew member, to his employee, whatever you want to call him, for a good 10-15 minutes straight, talking about you need to go here, you need to do this, pick up this, go there, do this, but not this, then go to the next job. And I got confused, I forgot what he said at the start of the call, and I he got off the phone and I said, How the fuck do you supposed to expect anybody to follow those instructions? So I you know, I didn't remember. I said to him, Do you even remember what instructions you give him at the start? And he's like, No. So, you know, just regurgitating your thoughts and what's going on in your head, and regards that to one of your teammates, team members is not giving instructions. That's not clear instructions. So we need to make sure that again things are written down, things are recorded, you know, give pictures where you can, give as much explanation as possible, and again, have it written down. Because if it didn't, if it's not written down, it didn't happen. And the last one then, number four, is the owner doing everything. So this is where you think that if you're not involved, then you know it's not gonna happen. But again, that always comes down to again those things above, you know, poor planning, per communication, per scope of works or whatever else. So what ends up happening is you end up picking up the materials, you're answering every single every single call, you're solving the problems that the team should be solving, you're running the site for things that you know that you don't need or you don't need to be there. And every time you're doing that, you're not just doing the things that only you can do, you know, growing the business, you know, winning the right clients, planning ahead, making good decisions, and that's where the real value is. So when you're getting dragged into the site-related stuff, you're actually pulling away from the stuff that's actually making a big impact, like I said before. Okay, so how do I actually start fixing this? Because I know some of you are sitting going, right, Mark, that all makes sense, but where do I start? I know I dropped a few hints in there, but here's the thing you don't need to fix everything at once. In fact, trying to fix everything at once just is

Fix Communication And Stop Doing It All

SPEAKER_00 10:42

a surefire way to keep people stuck because you'll just find yourself running around in circles. Trying to fix everything, you end up fixing nothing. So, what I want you to do is every business decision or every decision you need to make or everything that happens, every process, every area of the business goes through three questions. Number one, why am I doing this? Is there a real reason this needs to happen, or is it just the way it's always being done? Could somebody else do this? You know, why am I having to do this all the time? Why am I having to answer the same questions all the time? Try and really find the answer to that question, ask the question and try and think about it for a long period of time. Instead of just reacting and doing the thing that you're doing, ask yourself, why am I doing this again? Number two, what exactly is it? Strip it right back. What is the process, this task, this thing actually? Order materials, you know, how is it communicated? How can we do it faster? How can we do it better? How can we get the the supplier to deliver, etc. etc. And number three, is there a better way? So again, touched on that already. Is there a better way of doing this? So why am I doing this? What exactly is it that I'm doing, and is there a better way to do it? So if you ask yourself, you live by those three questions, you will naturally build a leaner, more efficient business. We have other resources and other things that we do inside the blueprint. I think I had a video on it on it recently about the daily diary and how you're spending your time, how you can review your time and what you can do to actually make the difference. But review is important. Knowing, actually looking at things from a different angle, instead of just acting on things and reacting to things, if you actually take a few minutes, I'm not talking about completely reevaluating your day, I'm just talking about when these things keep coming up, ask the question to yourself as to why does this keep happening? Ask the team member why does this keep happening? Why do we keep forgetting materials? Why are the wrong materials coming? Why do you still not have the answer to this question and get the honest feedback? Well, you didn't fucking explain it to me, you didn't write anything down, you weren't clear on it, the client doesn't even know what they're doing, etc. etc. So asking why seems insignificant, it seems kind of pointless,

Three Questions To Streamline Fast

SPEAKER_00 12:31

but only you've got the answers to those questions, and if you you don't find the answers without asking the question, that's what streamlining your business actually means. It's not about adding more things, it's not about buying more software or trying to find the big shiny thing to make the fix. It's about looking at where the real friction is, the stuff that's making the business harder than it needs to be, you know, looking at the same problems that keep coming up time and time again, and then fixing one thing at a time. So if it's invoicing, why are you always sitting all night trying to work out the invoicing? Is it because the information isn't there? Is it because you're not spending any time actually tracking it or writing it down and you're doing everything through memory? Why are you running back and forth to the materials? Is it because you're not planning? Is it because it's not being clearly communicated? So there'll be an answer for everything. But what is the biggest issue? What is the biggest thing you're spending most of your time on, the most thing reacting to? And that is the one thing you need to fix first and then work on from there. Do not try to fix everything at once. Because when you try to sort one thing at a time and then the next and then the next, the compound effect of that is massive. The business gets easier to run, your margins improve, you get your time back, and you're not firefighting every single day. And again, that is always the goal.

Pick One Fix And Take Action

SPEAKER_00 13:38

So here's what I want you to do from from this week or next week. Pick one area of your business that's creating the most friction. The one thing, run it through the three questions and take the first step to fix it. Not a plan, an actual action. You know, something you're actually going to do tomorrow. If you've listened to this and you're struggling to find out what that one thing is you'd focus on, please feel free to reach out because, like I say, I want to try and get everybody to get as much value as possible out of this and actually start making a difference in their business straight away. If you've got any questions, you can find me on socials, drop a comment below, and do whatever you need to do. And of course, like and subscribe as always if you find this useful.