The Construction Business Blueprint #042 - The Founder Operating System Explained (Live Keynote)

Most construction business owners look outside the business when things start to stall.

They blame the market, the team, the clients, the leads, the economy, or the systems.

But before you look externally, you need to look at the person leading the business.

In this episode of Construction Business Blueprint, Marc breaks down the Founder Operating System, the internal foundation behind every decision, system, result, and problem in the business.

Because if the founder is off, the business is off.

This session looks at three key pillars: vision, self-mastery, and energy.

Vision gives you direction.

Self-mastery helps you execute when things get uncomfortable.

Energy gives you the capacity to lead, think clearly, make decisions, and keep moving the business forward.

Marc also challenges construction business owners to look at their life and business from the outside, as if they were watching it like a movie, and ask: what advice would you give yourself?

If you’re avoiding hard decisions, running on empty, stuck in operator mode, overthinking, getting distracted, or constantly blaming external problems, this episode will help you see where the real work starts.

This is not soft motivation. It’s the internal operating system that determines how your business performs.

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Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to the Founder Operating System

00:13 - Why this section focuses on the person, not the business

00:21 - Why everything starts with the founder

00:45 - How your decisions and avoidance affect the business

01:02 - Why the Founder Operating System comes first

01:11 - Why external fixes won’t solve internal problems

01:30 - Clarity, regulation, and energy

01:48 - Why this work needs to be personal

02:19 - Watching your life like a movie

03:01 - What advice would you give yourself?

03:18 - What would you tell someone you loved?

03:49 - Asking yourself the same hard questions

04:18 - Making the decision you already know you should make

04:47 - Building awareness as a founder

05:02 - The gap between what you tell yourself and what you do

05:05 - If the founder is off, the business is off

05:16 - How emotional instability affects decisions

06:14 - No vision leads to quitting when friction appears

06:28 - Low energy leads to weak execution

06:55 - Why your internal capacity becomes the business ceiling

07:16 - Where to look first when results stall

07:53 - The three non-negotiables of the founder

08:04 - Growth Driver 1: the Founder Operating System

08:42 - The three pillars: vision, self-mastery, and energy

09:08 - Pillar 1: Vision

09:29 - Pillar 2: Self-mastery

10:05 - Pillar 3: Energy

10:39 - Why mood, energy, and performance matter

10:59 - Why the best Q3 plan won’t work without this

11:27 - Why vision is not goals or revenue targets

12:02 - What real vision actually means

12:37 - Why the business should support your life

12:54 - Why shallow vision kills momentum

13:24 - Why money without meaning creates quit energy

13:41 - Vision helps you withstand resistance

14:10 - What staying where you are is costing you

14:24 - You get to write your own business story

15:17 - Why the story has to be written first

15:57 - Where most founders get vision wrong

16:20 - The opportunity cost of short-term thinking

16:37 - Why a hire is not just a cost

17:28 - Vision gives you belief

18:24 - Questions to score your vision

19:04 - Pillar 2: Self-mastery

19:18 - Regulating yourself under pressure

19:44 - Making decisions even when they scare you

20:23 - Why fear makes everything harder

21:03 - Why uncertainty hijacks decision-making

21:36 - How fear and procrastination create failure

21:43 - Awareness is the key to self-mastery

22:16 - The danger of comfort and inconsistency

23:04 - Why financial success isn’t the full measure

24:00 - Fear, avoidance, and overthinking

24:43 - Why overthinking can feel like progress

25:32 - Seeing the decision versus executing it

26:04 - Why asking everyone’s opinion can keep you stuck

27:08 - Where is fear making your decisions?

27:18 - What decision do you already know the answer to?

27:46 - Pillar 3: Energy

28:10 - Why burnout creeps up on you

29:14 - Energy is not motivation

29:27 - Energy is your capacity to think, sell, and lead

30:03 - Doing work outside your strengths drains energy

31:02 - Where your energy is leaking

31:15 - Low-value tasks and energy drains

32:15 - Context switching in construction businesses

32:53 - Operator days versus founder days

33:18 - The real question: where is your energy leaking?

33:36 - Questions to score your energy

34:21 - Reviewing your three founder scores

34:51 - Why honesty creates the breakthrough

35:15 - Why the business starts and ends with you

36:14 - Vision, self-mastery, and energy brought together

36:36 - Identifying your strengths, challenges, and next moves

Transcript

Why The Founder Comes First

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So now we're going to go something and do something a bit different. And you have to stick with me on this, especially if you're completely alien to it. Just bear with me and have an open mind here. So we're going to stop looking at the business and we're going to start looking at the person running it. So it's called the founder operating system. And it's something we already look at during our 30-day review and reset. And even in the in the weekly check-ins where we do the mood, energy, and performance. Because everything we do in here is founder focused. Because you are the running everything. If you're off, then the team is off. So the founder and how you show up is very, very important, obviously. So operationally and the decisions that you make, the work that you know avoid, like we talked about that here, there's certain conversations that we're avoiding. Again, that all comes down to you. I say to everybody, even my kids, everything you do and everything happens to it is your fault. You have to figure it out. Okay, so this is the founder operating system. It comes before everything else. So before I had this conversation with somebody else in here, before looking for an external thing, you need to look internally first. So you can't, nothing external is going to fix an internal problem. There's nothing more internal than the person who's actually at the head of the business, which is you. So each and every person down here, not marketing, you know, not seals, not whatever, you need to look inside first and see what you could do differently. Because everything downstream is an impact of how you're showing up. So the founder operator system is crucial. So how clear you are, how regulated you are, how much energy you have. So for the next while here for this next section, hopefully we can get it done about 45 minutes before doing the Q3 planning. But it's all going to be very personal, it's going to be about you, not about the business. So if we're thinking of ideas and thinking about and you're looking at the answers, going business, business, business, you need to try and bring it in personal. And I'll be honest, this is one of the toughest parts of personal and business growth that I ever faced. You know, started working on these kind of things in about 2018, and it was one of the most difficult things because every time, every time someone asks you any question, you always relate it back to business every single time. But we're trying to look deeper here and think about the founder, we're trying to think about the person who's driving things. So we want to I want to start with a question, and I want you to actually sit with it. I want you to actually, you know, not just nod along.

Watch Your Life Like A Film

SPEAKER_00 2:22

And it might seem a wee bit far-fetched of what I'm saying here, but I want you the reason why it says this if you watched your life like a movie, what would you tell yourself? Okay, and it's not just a gimmick that I'm talking about here. I'm being serious. So if you could look at your life from the outside looking in. So this is why this is why it's always easier for me to identify identify things in your business that you can't, because I'm looking at I'm I'm from the outside looking in. It's easier, it's easier from the outside to look in because you're looking at things from a different angle, you can see all perspectives. But when you're stuck in the weeds and you're stuck in the day-to-day or in the ground or whatever you want to call it, it's really, really difficult to see anything that's going on, really. So I want to ask everybody or challenge everybody, if you were sitting at home watching Netflix or sitting in the cinema, watching yourself in a film, watching this per person, run the business, run the family, see how you're showing up every day. What advice would you give yourself? Like, what would you be shouting at the screen? Or you can flip it another way, second version. If this was somebody you loved, if this was your son, your brother, your father, whoever, what advice would you give them with what you're currently going through? What would you be saying? Like, you know, fuck's sake, like make the hair hire the guy. Stop, you know, granting yourself in in the hole every month, week on week, working yourself to the bone, you know, working silly hours or whatever it may be. Like what advice would you give yourself? Avoiding conversations. The questions you guys are asking me, I'm not being like it might sound silly, but you could ask yourself the same question. You know, sit and think about the question. That's why I always say when you've got a problem during the onboarding videos, it's like when you've got a problem, click clearly articulate what the problem is, then look at what you've tried to do to fix it before presenting it, because nine times out of ten, when you look at it in that way, you will actually identify it yourself and you'll see it differently. It may not land differently for some people, but I want to challenge you. So either looking at yourself on screen or looking at somebody or giving somebody advice to somebody close to you or somebody you love, what would you tell them with with your current situation? You know, tell them to stop undercharging, working yourselves into the ground, make a decision you already know you should be making. Because most of you know, again, Keith came up to me during the break with a question or an a that he already knew the answer to, and it wasn't until I said it he went, Yeah, do you know what you're right. But these things can be clearly seen from the outside. It's easier for me to spot these issues or challenges than it is to do it yourself. So, what I'm trying to get you to do is say kind of build that toolbox or tool chest to be able to do this as well, and have again raise that level of awareness. Something I talk about in here massively is that level of awareness. I'm gonna be talking about it the whole way through this whole sort of section here. We want to look at the gap that you know you tell yourself from the outside and what you're actually doing on the inside, and that gap is what we're gonna work on here together.

The Law: If You’re Off

SPEAKER_00 5:03

So, if the founder is off, the business is off. This is the core law that needs to be said out loud because everything here hangs off it. If the founder is off, the business is off. And I don't mean that in a soft, motivational way, I mean an operational. So emotional instability leads to poor decisions. I always say in here, take the emotion out of it, and again, use that example of Keith. I says, you know, how how you approach every situation completely dictates how it's gonna go. Had the same conversation with you, Graham, about a tough customer. How you approach the situation again? So you could say the client's client's a dickhead, something happened, he's a wanker, he reacted like this. But how did you present the problem? How did you show up to it? You know, did you come in? How did you show up that day? How did you treat the customer? How did you come home that evening to the family? You know, how you're showing up actually matters, and you could you blame everything else going on around you. But you make like you know, a panic call on a price, you know, you're scrambling for work, you're bringing in the emotion into it, you know, a hire, a project, whatever it may be. Because if you were stressed and you made that decision, it net you know, more or less and more likely wasn't the right decision to make. And I know this is difficult, but this is what we're trying to try to get everybody in here to achieve. So we probably saw that in your what didn't go to plan list. Okay, I want to talk about vision as well, but no vision, we're gonna talk about the three metrics of the founder here. But no vision leads to quitting the moment any friction appears. So that's what not having vision does. The first real bit of resistance and the energy to keep going just isn't there. So low energy again leads to weak execution. Even a brilliant strategy, the most the best plan, like I could put the best plan in front of you, guys, and and if you don't show up, if you don't turn up and do the work, if you're not eager for it, if you're gonna take it or leave it, then it's not gonna happen, it could fall apart. Same as if you're running on empty. If you're draining yourself of energy and you're running on empty, your ability to make decisions outside of your strength are gonna are gonna you know hinder. So the business doesn't rise beyond your internal, so like your your internal operational system. So I always say the business sometimes can be to your whatever your capacity is without those systems, without those processes, without those things in place. The business can only go to your capacity. But even if you have the best systems and process and plan in place, still if you're at capacity, that's it, that's your ceiling. So your clarity is the ceiling, your regulation is the ceiling, your your energy is your ceiling for your business. It will not perform if you're not showing up right. When the results stall, that's what I want to get you to think about. When the results stall, and some of the numbers, like some of the numbers there we looked at in the five metrics, the first place shouldn't be looking at your your marketing, shouldn't be looking at your sales, it shouldn't be looking at your team. You need to first of all look inside and see what's going on here and how you're showing up and what you're doing. How are you spending your time? Is it that founder or is it that operator? You know, have you been neglecting X, Y, and Z? The answer is probably yes. You need to fix those issues first because there is no external problem or shiny object that you'll find outside of the business that's going to fix a problem internally. The internally needs to be fixed first from the core. So there's three non-negotiables that make that up. There's three pillars. But first of all, we'll we'll do that growth driver. Okay, we'll do this this first question here, growth driver number one, the founder operating system. So if you're watching your life like a movie, what advice would you give yourself? You know, if it was your son, daughter, somebody you love running the business, what would you tell them? So write down what you tell that person on the screen or that person that you love, and it wants you to be honest about it. You know, would you push harder? Would you pull back? Would you finally, you know, listen, take part, hire, fire, do whatever. You know, what is what's already screaming in the face that you know? And if and if it's nothing, then you again you need to think deeper about this because there is bound to be something. We've all sat there watching something, and you're screaming at the TV, like even a horror film, like fuck these behind you. How do you not know? Same thing, lads and ladies. So we're gonna look at the the three pillars of the three non-negotiables.

The Three Non Negotiables

SPEAKER_00 8:40

We talk about non-negotiables in here, but get these right and everything downstream, including those five metrics that we talked about, gets easier. Get them wrong, get this wrong, and again, you might look at this or be listening to what I'm saying and thinking this is fucking way over what I'm all about here. Just sit with it for a minute, give me, give me, just have an open mind here because there's no nothing that you will do outside of these three things will fix those those three things essentially. That is the core of everything you do and how you're showing up. So the first one's vision. Vision's all about your direction. So that's why if if you if you are familiar with the genius model, some of you have seen it, some of you haven't, about how that the blueprint's made up, time, profit, control, and in the high-quality client section, it's about marketing and vision. The vision is crucial, the vision is your direction, and we're going to get into vision in more detail. This is a high level of what vision means. Vision means your direction. Self-mastery, that's regulating your emotions. This is something that most people struggle with the most. Having a vision is fine, but being able to regulate your emotions under pressure and the awareness that goes with it. So if anybody's in in business, being able to regulate your emotion regardless, like no matter what goes on, like not getting stressed, not getting overwhelmed, that's self-mastery, no matter what's going on. There could be a million fires burning around you. But if you if you remain cool, calm, making decisions, you'll get out of those things much quicker than just getting in coming in like a hurricane. And again, that energy, so the last one's energy, then, and that's your daily capacity to actually think and lead. So that's like literally your energy, not anything or if you this is actually your energy. How you show up again in your energy affects absolutely everything. So if your energy is low, so will your output be. That's why I often say to guys as well, when you're up working the all hours at night, which I've still I'm guilty of myself still at times, even last night, prepare for this, changing everything like I do last minute. That you know, are you doing your best work at that time? No. The answer is no. Sometimes I look back at stuff that I'd done late in the evening, look back the next morning, and go, what the f what was I even thinking? So, again, that's your energy, and that energy impacts everything. And that's why we do the 30-day review and reset. And again, like I said, we score that mood, energy, and performance. That's why it's absolutely crucial. Because without that, the the whatever we're talking about after that's completely pointless. Like this dictates how how this whole section here is here for a reason, and it dictates you could put the best plans in place for Q3. None of it, none of it will happen if you ignore this section. So we're going to take each one of them, I'm going to be straight with you, and then we're going to score yourself honestly on all three. And again, it's not a test, you know, it's a baseline. This is this is one we've never done before, and this is one, well, we've done it differently. We've never done it like this, but we want to review this every quarter. Okay, so just answer it honestly as you can, and it's the truth of where you're starting from today. Okay, so the most honest, the most raw you can be with yourself, the better. If you need to hide it from the next person next to you, then do it. You know, some of this work can be tough and it can expose a lot.

Vision Beyond Money And Goals

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Okay, so pillar one then the vision, and I need to be you know clear something up before most people get it wrong. Vision is not goals, vision is not money. You know, revenue target's not a vision, right? And goals are are pan the sky if you don't change again your attitudes, behaviors, and everything else. Like you could write goals to the cars, come home, but it never happened unless you actually do something about it. A target is just a number, and a number on its own won't carry you through anything, it won't it won't keep you going when time gets you know shit hits the fan, essentially. So, real vision is three things where the business is actually going. Again, we always ask why in here, why does this business even exist in the first place? Like beyond the money. I talked about having a conversation today or yesterday was sorry with somebody who had said about they wanting to do something that their family has never done, they always they came from you know sort of poverty and wanted to be the first person to change that. So, why are we all in business? Why do we all get into business in the first place? Some of us lose sight of that. It's that do things your own way, it's maybe for the money, but we're gonna look beyond the money here. You know, what is it really for? What is it really doing for to do things your own way? We need it, we need to get back to that. We need to remember why we're doing things here and then how it integrates with your life, because the business that's winning, why your life falls apart is not a vision worth having. That's why you know everything we do here, the business is a vehicle that provides you the kind of life you want to live, not the other way around. You can have the most successful business in the world and then turn around and there's nobody there to shirt with because you've been buried in the job. It's obvious why it matters so much, but it's you know it's brutally true. If the vision is shallow, okay, if your vision isn't strong enough or it's not clear enough, then resistance will kill any momentum you have. So as soon as a problem appears, you will forget about it. So the vision needs to be strong, you need to be feeling. I know I always say leave the feeling and emotion out of decisions, but you need to have a better feeling behind your vision and what what and why you're doing it. Because the first sign of friction, then you'll fool. And again, money without meaning, it just you know, it creates that quit energy. So you can still be making good money and have a successful business and still want to walk away. Some of us have probably been there because there's nothing underneath it, nothing. You can't if you have all the money and no time to go and enjoy it, what is the point? So if there's no real vision, the first sign of again friction just dwindles it all away. So vision is the thing, the only thing that will let you actually withstand the resistance. So if you're true to what you're trying to achieve, your your your vision of where you're trying to go, and you kind of do that at all costs, no matter what the hiccups are, you'll always remain on track. So, like we say, it's never that straight path. But as long as the same as stocks and shares or anything else, if anybody's familiar with it, it'll go up and down, up and down. But as long as it's steady going forward, if that vision's clear enough for where you're going, that'll happen. If it's not, then you'll just be fucking going around in circles. You know, setting a goal for the next week's not enough. What is the bigger picture here? Why why are we doing it? So then we're gonna look at why is staying exactly where you are now actually costing you, or what's it actually costing you over the next year? So if you don't change, and again, remember, guys, like we'll bring it back to this movie, and it may sound cheesy, but like everybody is a fucking director of their own film. Like you make the rules. I have this conversation with people all the time, they're pinning themselves up against the wall, but you make the rules, it's your business. You dictate how it works, you dictate how it goes, not anybody else. Yes, you may be at the mercy of a client for a particular deadline, but you know, at the end of the day, you are the creator of this, and again, it's it we take it even broader and talk about life. You you get to decide what happens here, not anybody else. It's totally up to yourself. And the quicker you realize that, the better, you know, you don't have to fall into whatever everyone else has does. That's the issue with this game, is everyone just follows on from what they they've been told by the person before them. That's kind of how we all learned. We learned off our foreman, we learned off the guy we worked for, we learned off our dad or our granddaughter, and then we just carried things on. You can rewrite that whole fucking script. Doesn't have to be, it can be whatever the fuck you want. You can create your own business, you can not do this, you can do this. Doesn't matter what anybody else is doing, doesn't matter what a competitor has done before you do not have to follow their path. You create your own. So think about it deeper, think about it like that. But the story, obviously, first of all, like you make up your own story, but the story has to be first of all written. So we need to get very clear on what that vision is, and that's what we do in here. We we look at that aim goal, then we reverse engineered, we put the steps in place in order to get there. I can't that's the only thing I can't do for anybody in here is give them that vision and that vision. And I know that can sound a bit fluffy, but you need to bear with me because it's real work that needs to be done, and it's a legitimate way to look at things because it puts the whole thing in a completely different perspective from what you've probably looked at before. We need to start looking at it differently. So you're not just drifting through life, you're actually making your way through it and actually making progress. So where most founders get vision badly wrong, and it's the opportunity cost, you know. Most of you judge it by looking only at today, only looking so far. And what's it going to cost me right now to make this change? You know, the hire, you know, raise my prices. What's you know, we're always looking at that short-term thing, like even in construction. I like the biggest example I could pick for this about not looking beyond the initial decision or not or looking at every decision in a short-sighted way, is making a hire. People always struggle with that first hire, bringing somebody in to kind of replace them, or even you know, you never replace yourself 100%, but even at a 60 to 70 percent capacity, bringing somebody in to fill that void. People often think or look at that decision based on the current revenue the business is generating. Can I afford to take somebody on? But you have to look at the opportunity cost, that's the real cost. That when you make that hire, what will that do for your business? What will that will what will that enable you to go and then do and bring in more revenue? Look at things in the business that actually need to be fixed. Again, that founder work. So making that hire is not just about can I afford that now? It's what that's going to bring once you put that person in place, and then you can step back to go and actually you know generate more revenue, go and meet more clients, go and have those conversations you don't have the opportunity to. For some of the smaller guys, it could be just can't even get near pricing a job because you're just completely swamped. You know, you might think straight away that's a big cost, that's a big cost to bring that guy in. But that again, that's that short-term thinking. You're not looking at the bigger vision here. Bringing that person in enables you to then go and do X. That that's how you need to be looking at these decisions in business, looking at it through a wider lens. So we could go on and on here about examples, but it's kind of that that pretty much sums it up. And that that vision is what gives you the belief, like I say, without it. Again, you get panic decisions, you get doubt. And look, everybody will have this, regardless of how clear your vision is. Sometimes the vision can change, but if there's not one really there at all, and you're only looking at week by week, you never don't expect anything to actually happen. Nothing real or meaningful anyway. You need to have that vision crystal clear, and that's what all the the mindset stuff, the concrete mindset section in the in your business plans, that's what's all at the beginning. That's not just by chance or whatever something has happened, that that's there for a reason because without that vision, without getting rid of all these limiting beliefs and other things or what's possible and actually thinking about things differently, the rest of it doesn't matter. But people can be guilty of wanting to come in and and you know shortcut straight to the tracking and the different things, and while they're all important, like I say, without that vision in place, none of it's ever going to actually happen, or the first sign of something going wrong, you'll stop doing it anyway. So the vision is actually crucially important. So the first bit of work there, open up the workbook there, pillar one vision. So three questions where is the business actually going? Do you truly know? So, do you have a vision for the business? Why does the business exist beyond the money? What is it for? And what is staying exactly where you are right now actually costing you? So, what is the opportunity cost of staying where you are over the next year and by doing nothing about it? So the identity statements at the bottom. So if you said your this statement out loud, like I know exactly what I want and how I'm going to get there, would you score one, which is weak, or a five, which is yes, I know exactly where I'm going, how I'm going to get there. So score yourself honestly on that one. If you're still writing, just keep going, okay? There's no rush. Again, I'm going to talk again

Self Mastery Under Pressure

SPEAKER_00 19:04

for another way. So pillar two is self-mastery. And this is the one, you know, the hardest one, probably for most people in the room, and the one nobody likes to admit that they struggle with. So self-mastery is the ability to regulate yourself. It's again discipline, but also the more so the ability to regulate yourself under pressure. So we talk about how pretty much how quickly it takes to rebuild yourself after something happens, or how you deal with that situation. So after a fear, a stress, a setback, something traumatic, whatever it may be, it's how you bounce back. It's how you not just take those problems, how you deal with those issues, but how you then rebuild yourself after it happens. That's that's the self-mastery. So it's like about resilience almost, and it's about you know how you can still make a decision, even though it scurs you, even though you're not quite sure of what the outcome is. That's that's self-mastery. You know, doing the uncomfortable things, that's doing them anyway, even if they feel majorly uncomfortable. But again, some of you have it, or everybody in this room has it in them to some degree. This is something that can be this well, trust me, this is something that is learned. This is something that you, if you don't have, you learn it. You you you gain it over time by you know that self-work. But everybody in here made a decision, and without anything tangible, you invested something, you showed up, and again, that was all very down to you guys. So it was very unknown, but you just done it anyway. So that exists in every person in this room. Self-mastery is important for different reasons, and it comes up in different ways. Fear is one of them. Fear makes everything harder, full stop. It makes decisions harder, it makes your marketing harder. You're not sure, you know, fear of how you're going to be portrayed online or whatever it may be, it makes selling harder, you know, meeting those clans, doing those things, taking on these bigger projects, whatever it may be, raising your prices, that's all, you know, that fear had limited belief. Makes winning the work harder, it makes having the conversations with team and clients or me harder, you know, fear of what might happen as a result of that. Most people don't fear or fail because they don't know what to do. Most people feel because of uncertainty or external pressures, hijacking decision making. You know, so most people don't do the thing, even though like what you know you should do and what you do, again are two totally different things. And that's why we talked about looking at yourself from the outside, looking in on that movie, or somebody you loved in the same scenario, what advice would you give them? Because even though we know something something's screaming at us, and even back at that other section where you meant when the problems, did the problems just happen, did they appear? Could you see them coming? Because failure sometimes is inevitable because of our lack of vision or because of our lack of self-belief or because of our lack of or or because of the amount of fear, or procrastination. Procrastination and comfort are also huge here and massive part of self mastery, but it all comes back to awareness. Having the awareness is the key to self mastery. So catching yourself on, as we'd say here in Belfast, for anybody who's unfamiliar with our lingo. If you catch yourself on, when you when you're doing something or going through the motions, it's easy to catch yourself on, realize fuck, I'm doing it again, I'm doing it again. I've just liced. I've just went into site and fucking kicked them all out of the way and took over, you know, hung up on the client or whatever else. Again, having that awareness of of your behavior, how you're showing up is all down to self-mastery. So you can almost sound crazy, but having that conversation with yourself and catching yourself on before it happens. So then there's comfort as well, and comfort has hit a few people on here. Okay, getting comfortable when things are going well is another one. Being consistent, being consistent is probably the key to everything. You know, making big grand gestures will have short-term gains, but over the long term, it's consistency, it's small, impactful things over or small things or small actions over time and make the biggest impact. And when we're getting comfortable, when we're everything's going well, it's easy to get comfortable and then start neglecting certain things. So you should be always striving. It's not as if you're looking at things from a place of lack or not having, or nothing's ever good enough, or always wanting more. But you should always be at least reviewing things and making sure that things are going the right way, or even in improving things, improving certain aspects of it. So if things are going well financially, that's not the measure of success. Neither is how busy you are. Again, it could be how much time you're spent in the business. There's always improvements, there's always growth and always improvements. Even how you're showing up as a leader, whatever it may be. So even when things seemingly in the business are going well, again, that doesn't mean that life in general is going well. So getting comfortable is a dangerous place. And if you're not actually going forward and you think you're maintaining, you're actually going backwards because the whole rest of the world is moving on without you. Things always need to be progressing. And again, it's careful, be just be careful of what I'm saying there. I'm not saying that from a place of lack, like constantly chasing. I've had that conversation with a couple of people in here. Nothing ever seems good enough. Like you're chasing a siny object and you get it, and then what's next? What's next? What's next? You hit a revenue stream, what's next? And that's because there's nothing personal about it. That's why we ask that question what are you really doing it for? If you're just chasing it on a material thing, if you're chasing a number or or something like a material thing, that's why it's never good enough because it doesn't actually do anything for you when you hit it. So it's always that's why we always need to look deeper. So you know what you need to do, but fear stops you doing it. So I want to show you the pattern. Fear and uncertainty leads to avoidance. So often, when we avoid the inevitable, it's purely down to fear or being uncomfortable in this situation. So even when it's a tough conversation with a team member or a client, like I said, it's the fear around what might happen after is what puts you off. There may be legal implications or something like that that we just had that conversation about. Or overthinking an obvious decision, even though it's stirring you in the face. So, like I said, pitching yourself from the outside looking in and going to yourself, like, fuck me, I know what I need to do here. I know, I know that that's the decision I need to make, but why the fuck am I not doing it? What's holding me back here? Why can I not make that decision? And it's only until you do it then you go, I should have done this years ago. So overthinking sometimes can feel like progress. And I'm gonna like a scenario. Have you ever seen somebody and you look at uh at their success and go, but fuck me, how's he doing that? Like he's he's that kid and he's flying, absolutely flying. It's because they've got that fucking ignorant, we're gonna do it anyway. They're not overthinking it, and maybe it's because they know less about what the implications could be, but that's why they have the balls to do it anyway, because they don't know what could go wrong, so they do it anyway. There's no fear they're holding them back or stopping them from doing it. But we're overthinking sometimes, feel like you're playing it safe. Oh, I need to be careful here. But it's just a sophisticated way of holding yourself back. Overthinking is just procrastination, something you know you've been avoiding, and you know if you do it, what it you know, we have to weigh up the pros and the cons as well. But overthinking, again, you're telling yourself you're being careful, it's not. So, yeah, self-mastery is the difference between two things, essentially, we can sum it up. It's seeing the decision and actually executing the decision. That's what self-mastery is, and everyone in this room you know can see their decisions. The winners are the ones who execute them even when it's uncomfortable. So the best clients in here who do who do the best in here are the guys who put the blinkers on, go through the plan, ask questions, get answers, and just act on it. Or if you're toying around, why I don't I don't know about this, why are we doing this, or what do you think this? The benefits of taking action, even if there's you're not entirely sure far way up what could happen at the other end of it if things go wrong. But that's you know, the ones who ponder over everything, who second guess everything, who ask everybody's opinion, that's a pet hate of mine. You know, well, such and such said this, and such and such said that. And like that old saying, everyone, you know, opinions are like our shoulders, everybody's got one. You know, that's the truest saying in the world. And what happens is when you're asking everybody for an opinion on something, you're waiting until somebody says something that agrees with your narrative. So you're like, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Yep, that's what I think. I'm going with that. We're all guilty of doing that because you just want somebody to agree with us. We're looking at somebody to be a nodding dog or a yes man. But those guys in your business, that's why you know there's tough conversations that I'll have every person in here. I will never tell you what you want to hear, ever. You know, and that's uncomfortable for both of us, but it needs to be said. You know, if you're not going through the emotions, or if you come to me with an excuse or a reason, I'll call you out on it because you know it needs to happen, and that's a higher level of guidance. You know, if I just yeah, okay, go ahead, yeah, no problem, no fair enough. It's not for you, it's not for you. You know, but I can see what other people are doing on the outside. I've been through most of it myself too. And again, we'll we'll picture it back to that film where you're screaming at the screen, going, you know, you know both sides of the coin, it's two different scenes, two different people, and you know what's going to happen, and you're screaming at the TV screen, telling them to do what you need them to do, and you know what they should do. It's the same thing. Where is fear currently making your decisions for you? And again, even think about it outside of business. Don't just focus on business. This could be personal, completely personal. What decision you already know the answer to, but haven't executed. So that could be having that conversation with somebody who knows about egg in the business, it could be whatever it may be, something health related, whatever, relationship related. And then the last one, I act with discipline, that's your statement. I act with discipline, avoid distractions, and manage my emotions well. One, not at all. Five, you do it very

Energy Leaks And Burnout Risk

SPEAKER_00 27:43

well. So energy is the most practical one. Energy is your daily capacity to lead. So, but you operate on a finite, you know, daily battery. As such, again, I always say you know, you wake up with a certain capacity, and I wear this whoop thing. Sometimes you can put your head away, you know, tells you your energy for the day and how well you've slept and whatever else. How you wake up, how much energy you've spent or what you've done over the weekend affects the following week. We've all been there having a heavy weekend, then your whole following week's fucked. So energy is your daily capacity to lead. And I want you to talk, I want to talk about uh something important here, which is burnout. Okay, so burnout is something that you don't see coming. Burnout uh will creep up and bite you in the ass. You can't even maybe put a finger on burnout, you don't even know when it's happening, but it's happening to you. So burnout is something again you need to have that level of awareness, be able to identify. But again, we need to avoid them. You know, even people who momentum is building, or you're trying to push for something, and you go, right, I'm all or nothing here, I'm gonna go seven days a week all this month. But again, what happens then is the quality drops off, or then after that month, you're you're balanced essentially. So, what would be better is working to 80% capacity for for two months, you know, but pushing this here over 120%, burning through everything, working, working, working. I just wanted to kind of make everybody aware that the burnout is very, very real. Some of you have probably already felt it, some of us have been through it and haven't even known. But you know, if you don't plan for the recovery, you will burn out. If you don't plan for downtime, if you don't plan for white space, if you don't take you know a weekend, like at least a Sunday, to just reflect, to chill out, to do whatever, burnout is inevitable. I also want to just talk about something about energy. Like, energy is not motivation, and I'll touch on motivation as well. Motivation is a feeling, and it comes and goes, but energy is your your actual capacity to think clearly, decide well, and then like it says, there lead properly. And that's the thing that runs out. That's the thing that some of us only have a certain capacity to, and that's why I often say as well, that the business can only go to the capacity personally that you can withhold. So you need you need to be looking at that when you're making decisions as well, is what does that how does that impact me personally, my level of involvement, what that's going to do to your stress levels, you have to think of those things before making decisions, even though it's a big shiny number or might look good for other people on the outside. Another thing about your energy and how to protect your energy is doing things outside of your strengths. So if you're focusing on tasks that drain your time or energy, or you're dealing with clients or dealing with team who destroy your energy, that's important, or you're doing certain types of work that you just don't enjoy, that will drain your battery faster than anything will. So it doesn't matter how good or how strong you are showing up. You know, everybody in here, we all either came from the tools or are on the tools, except for the admin or business support. But you think about it when we've all been out on site and we can get through 12 hours of manual labour, and then you go into the office for two hours, you're fine asleep at the table because it's draining your energy because you it bores you to tears. So that's when we're talking about energy leaks. There's certain tasks that will drain your battery faster than others. There's certain people who you'll work with who'll drain your battery faster than others, certain clients or certain types of work, and that's why you often hear people say, people drain the life out of them. That's that's a true thing. You know, people irritate you. That that is real, and again, that level of awareness, you need to be awareness of which ones, what drains your energy and what doesn't. So we need to look at where your energy is leaking. So it doesn't matter how well you sleep or you could, you know, whatever raw food debts, and you feel fantastic and you're you're brilliant, but the tasks you do during the day could drain that very quickly. And you'll often hear me talk about low-value tasks, you know, like certain things like admin, where you're you know, you're as a business owner, your time's better spent. You're no one else can do the things you can do. Like that that founder worker stuff that nobody else in your business can do. You know, make decisions, big, big commercial decisions, or hiring and fire, or other things. That's that they're high value tasks that actually make massive impacts in the business. Admin, while it's absolutely crucial, it's the endless stuff. The stuff that if it wasn't there, your business wouldn't operate at all. But we need to look at that and see is that something that's draining your energy completely? Chasing clans, so chasing quotes, chasing money, chasing invoices, you know, if that's draining your energy, if you turn up, you know, full of beans, and next thing that's you find yourself doing all the time, that's that's having a massive impact and draining you more than anything else. Probably for financial stress is probably the biggest and quickest drain of anybody's energy is financial stress. If you had all the money in the world, nothing really else you wouldn't really give too much of a shit about, you know, or it'll affect you less. But financial stress is is probably one of the biggest ones. Context switching is another one, and this is one that's really difficult in the construction industry when you're constantly chopping and changing and being all the roles in the business at once. So managing the project, pricing the work, working on the tools, dealing with the lads, dealing with the clients. If you're constantly switching context from task to task, flipping between site, office, quotes, phone, that will drain you massively. So this is again business and personal, so we're not just talking about business here. There's things outside of the business that are draining your energy too. Like I said, the stuff you get up to at the weekend, the relationship, and the big one, you're bringing stress from home into the business, and vice versa. It flows both ways. And we'll bring it to the you know, the founder and operator stuff. The operator day is loud, it's reactive, and it leaks energy everywhere. And the founder's day is quieter, more deliberate, and it protects your energy for the few decisions that actually move things along. So when you're in that operator mode, it will drain you quicker than anything ever will. And the founder mode, while it can feel quiet and less impactful, that's the stuff that's going to drive you forward. That's the stuff that's going to bring you know energy. So the question isn't you know, how do you get more motivated or how do you get myself up in the morning to do this? The question is where is your energy actually leaking? What's draining you? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to delegate, or what do you need to protect so that you've actually got capacity left to do the things you actually need to do in life? So the last one there then, pillar three, energy. Where are your biggest energy leaks right now? Admin, chasing clans, chasing money, scattered selling. Scattered selling just means like trying to deal with so many different variations, different projects, trying to do too much, trying to, you know, the business has too many facets to it. Context switching, personal chaos outside of the business. What work are you doing outside of your strengths that's collapsing your best output? What's the one thing that you would stop, delegate, or protect? So stop or delegate is like the admin stuff or anything else, or or managing the sites or dealing with clients. What you need to protect is like the founder team or your own health and it getting to the gym, doing whatever you need to do, that actually boosts your energy, that brings you forward. And then the statement at the end: I have the focus, health, and time, they executed at a high level, and then score it from one to five.

Score Yourself Then Set Next Moves

SPEAKER_00 34:22

And we'll just take a few minutes to do that. If you're still writing, work away. I'm just going to talk for a while, so just you know, if you're still jotting stuff down, work away. But now you've scored all three of your metrics. Vision, self-mastery, energy. You've got three honest numbers in front of you where you've scored it at the bottom. And some of them are you know probably aren't very good, let's be honest. Right? And that's exactly where the work is in that honesty. Because something I've learned is that you know, more than any individual pillar, the breakthrough is in is in the embarrassment. It's when you're you know able to, or this thing that you're reluctant to admit, you know, that you're the cause of the problem, or that that's why things are going wrong. You know, and I think Rand, I actually had the conversation with you on the call, and you said you're quite prepared to admit that you're the problem. And I said, or maybe I am the problem, and I said, No, you definitely are. Because that's the case for everybody in here. Whatever's going wrong, whatever's going right, it's because of you. Something you could do differently would affect all of it. Um and that's because you had stops and ends of you. And I touched on that at the beginning about you know, you're the captain of the ship and blah blah blah. But it's easy, like I said a few slides ago, it's easy to blame the market, it's easy, you know, to blame the economy or a client, but there's often something, there's always something. Like if you told me ten reasons why you couldn't do something, I'll probably give you 11 or 12 reasons why you could have or what you could have done differently. So it's harder to look at yourself, and that's why we do it. It's harder to look at yourself and admit that the person running the business needs to change something, and that's why this work can be can be difficult, and that's why it's uncomfortable. And you know, that but that slightly embarrassing bit of honesty, that's where the breakthrough happens. So, whatever came up for you in the last while in those workbooks that made you uncomfortable, that's that's not the problem to bury, that's not something to shy away from. That's what you need to lean into. So, we're going to talk about again fix the founder, we're just gonna bring it all together on that last page. And what I really want is to try and do this as deeply as possible, right? Not just surface level stuff, but these is kind of summarizing that whole section. Founder operating system is obviously the growth drawer number one because it starts and ends with you, okay? The vision gives you the direction, self-mastery enables you to execute, and the energy gives you the capacity to do it all. And we spoke about that law of if the founder's off, then everything else is off, the business, the personal life, everything else. So I want you to look at that last section the three strengths, three challenges, and the immediate fixes are next moves. And I really want you to try your best to get everything filled in here. And if you can't get five next moves, fine, but at least if you can get those first six points, top three strengths, top three challenges, then we can we can have a discussion on what the next move needs to be if you're not clear on it.