The Construction Business Blueprint #045 - You Can’t Delegate Chaos

Why does everything still land back on you, even after you’ve hired more people?

You’ve got a team. You’ve given out tasks.

You’ve told people what needs to be done.

But every decision, client issue, material order, invoice, and problem still finds its way back to your desk.

That’s because giving someone a task is not the same as handing over ownership.

In this episode of Construction Business Blueprint, Marc explains how to properly delegate responsibilities inside a trade or construction business, whether that’s to a tradesman, site lead, project manager, estimator, QS, admin team member, or another key hire.

Marc breaks down why you can’t delegate chaos, why a responsibility needs to be organised and clearly defined before it can be handed over, and why the person taking it on needs to understand the outcome, the standard, and the decisions they’re trusted to make.

You’ll also learn the four biggest reasons delegation fails:

• You don’t know what good looks like.
• Fear and doubt stop you from letting go.
• You expect someone to do everything exactly like you.
• Being needed has become part of your identity.

Marc also shares a practical example of how to step back without undermining the person you’ve put in charge, why different doesn’t automatically mean wrong, and why your team will follow the standards you tolerate, not just the standards you talk about.

If you want to build a construction business that gives you more time, more profit, and more control, you need to stop issuing instructions and start handing over real ownership.

Subscribe for weekly videos helping trade and construction business owners build better teams, improve profit, and step out of the day-to-day.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Construction Business Blueprint

00:15 - Recap: does the business run without you?

00:23 - Why everything still lands back on the owner

00:36 - Wanting a team you can trust

00:50 - How business growth can scale dependency

01:10 - Why having more time doesn’t solve the problem

01:27 - The four reasons delegation fails

01:38 - This applies to every role in the business

02:06 - Giving a task is not handing over ownership

02:20 - The difference between instructions and delegation

02:46 - Ordering materials versus owning procurement

03:16 - Why everything keeps returning to you

03:27 - You can’t hand over a mess

03:46 - Why chaos must be fixed before it’s delegated

04:02 - A process should be clear enough to follow

04:36 - You can’t delegate chaos

04:39 - If you can’t explain it, you can’t hand it over

04:47 - Why delegated responsibilities need measurable outcomes

05:22 - When a task only works because you’re doing it

05:37 - The four gaps stopping you from defining a role

05:43 - Reason 1: you don’t know what good looks like

05:54 - Knowing you need help isn’t enough

06:14 - Hiring someone without defining the role

06:27 - Why “hire and hope” doesn’t work

06:46 - New people still need clear guidance

07:03 - Different methods and standards on site

07:31 - Never just hire and hope

07:51 - “I need office help” is not a defined role

08:09 - How to identify what should be handed over

08:24 - Why obvious to you isn’t obvious to everyone

08:43 - Defining what your new role becomes

09:18 - What will you do with the time you get back?

09:39 - Using freed-up time for founder work

10:02 - A real example of bringing in a lead joiner

10:40 - The test: do you return as number one or number two?

11:17 - Stepping back into site as the second-in-command

11:30 - How to observe leadership without taking over

12:09 - Becoming a fly on the wall in your own business

12:16 - Never undermine the person you’ve put in charge

12:27 - Reason 2: fear and doubt

12:45 - “What if they’re useless or leave?”

13:08 - Fearing problems that haven’t happened

13:24 - Why holding people back hurts the business

13:42 - Where doubt comes from

13:52 - Why industry opinions can keep you stuck

14:32 - Not believing because you haven’t seen it work

14:40 - Losing an argument that never happened

15:04 - Stop avoiding imaginary problems

15:16 - Solve real problems when they appear

15:37 - The real problem: you’re still doing everything yourself

15:46 - Reason 3: unrealistic expectations

15:52 - Waiting to find someone as good as you

16:03 - How someone can eventually become better than you

16:22 - Why new hires won’t instantly fix everything

16:32 - You don’t need a clone

16:49 - Define the outcome, not the method

16:58 - Your way isn’t automatically the best way

17:35 - Let the person own how they reach the outcome

18:13 - Different doesn’t mean wrong

18:42 - What happens when someone is better than you?

18:50 - How ego can interfere with delegation

19:00 - When the team and clients start going to them instead

19:33 - That is the outcome you’re trying to create

20:05 - Reason 4: fear of no longer being needed

20:23 - “If I let go, what am I for?”

20:40 - How feeling needed becomes proof that you matter

21:03 - Why letting go feels uncomfortable

21:24 - How owners quietly sabotage delegation

21:42 - Failing to train or fully hand over the role

21:47 - Taking it back the first time it isn’t perfect

22:07 - Wanting freedom without doing the uncomfortable work

22:24 - How your beliefs create the result

23:04 - Why fear is not a business strategy

23:16 - What standards have you been tolerating?

23:24 - The things you walk past become acceptable

23:41 - Fixing standards before bringing someone new in

24:10 - The team follows what you tolerate

24:23 - What have you stopped doing as the owner?

24:51 - Your team does what you tolerate, not what you say

24:58 - Which of the four reasons applies to you?

25:14 - The Role Definition Blueprint

25:39 - How to request the blueprint

Transcript

Why Everything Still Lands On You

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back as always to another episode of the Construction Business Blueprint YouTube channel. The channel, if you're a trading construction business owner, you can come to go through the exact same lessons and guides that I give to my private mentees to get more time, more profit, and more control again in your trading construction business. So last week we talked about does the business actually run without you or could, if you stepped away or went on holiday, what would break first? Today we're going to talk about why it all still lands on you, and we're going to talk about actually starting to set up a team, delegating things, and we're going to get into a lot of stuff here. So just to brief on last week again, or to just bringing up the speed, you know, you say you want a team that you can trust. Time back out of the day-to-day, but every job, you know, every every decision still finds its way back to your desk. Every client conversation needs to run through you. You name it, no matter what, you have to be at the back and call of everybody and everything. And sometimes what happens, we talked about this previously, when you're scaling the business, sometimes you're just scaling dependency. So the more team you have, it's just the more decisions you need to make, the more places you need to be at once. And we're going to talk about how to actually get out of that trap. A lot of people just talk about the fact. We're going to talk about how you actually get out of that. And again, we talked about how you know most people will come back and say it's time. You know, if I just had more time, but again, if you had more time, you would just fill it with more of the same thing: more decisions, more places to be, more clan conversations, more site visits. You wouldn't actually be doing anything differently with your time, you'd just be doing more of the same thing. Okay, so it's never really time, it's usually one of four things, and the four things we're going to get into on this video, okay? We're going to break into the very things that causes it. Just before we move on, as well, okay. We're not just talking about surface level bringing in another joiner or another tailor or another tradesman. We're talking here about finance departments, we're talking about project managers, we're talking about QS and estimators, talking about admin. So we're talking about building a full team. So don't just listen to this and think this is how I take on another tradesman or whatever else. This is how you bring in any other, start adding in any other team member to your business to take on any task that you no longer either want to do, need to do, or should be doing,

Telling Tasks Versus Handing Over

SPEAKER_00 2:06

or whatever. So the first thing that I want to get out of the way before we get into like the four reasons why is that telling something isn't handing over. So I briefly touched on this and said I would explain it further in this video. So this is exactly what I'm going to do. A task is an instruction. Okay, it lasts a day and then it's back with you tomorrow. So a handover or delegation means that that person owns the outcome and can make a call or make a decision without having to go through you. That is what handover and delegation means compared to I'm gonna tell him to do this. Telling somebody to do something and fully handing over responsibility are two completely different roads. So let's talk about the difference. That's like telling your guy on site that or your admin, I want you to order the materials from now on. That's different from materials and purchase orders, purchasing procurement is completely yours. Nothing stops on site because anybody needs anything. You deal with all the suppliers, and again you're mapping that out, and you're kind of talking about now, I don't want to ever see or hear of anything from it again. That's kind of a handover rather than just saying, Look, I need you to order materials next week. Because the reality is you've been issuing tasks for the last 10, 15, 20, 30 years, however long you've been in business, and that's why it still lands on you because you've been given instructions rather than delegating or handing

You Cannot Delegate A Mess

SPEAKER_00 3:27

over. And the bit that nobody talks about is that whatever you're handing over needs to be fixed first. So you can't hand over a mess. If you struggle with something and whatever you're trying to do is chaos, it's a mess. You can barely get your head around it, or you're just kind of getting through because you've been doing it for so long. You can't delegate that, it's not ready to be handed over. You know, you can't just lift the shit off your desk and dump it on somebody else's and expect them to run with it. The problem or the thing that you're trying to hand over has to be organized, it has to be processed, it has to be structured in some way, shape, or form that somebody can follow it step by step, that they could literally never go wrong. And if there is a question, it's not how do I do this, it's okay, Mark, there's an issue with this. Can can we maybe find a way to a solution to this? This is a problem that keeps happening, or Mark, I think the way we're doing this isn't really working very well. I have a suggestion to change it to this. Rather than just saying, I can't deal with this, or this isn't working. You know, there that's when you're giving somebody an instruction rather than delegating something out step by step, showing them what good looks like. And again, we're gonna get into how we do all that in a second, but again, I just wanted to make the point before we get into any of this. You can't just take your shit and land it on somebody else's desk and expect them to run with it. You can't delegate chaos. The other thing, the other piece to add to that is if you can't explain it to yourself or you're struggling to write it down, then you can't hand it over either. Also, if you can't measure it, if you can't look at what good looks like, as in no supplier invoices, queries come to me, all supplier invoices are checked against the purchase orders, nobody's ringing me from site to say that they need this or they need that, or you know, things are ordered in real time, so we're not waiting until things run out to place the orders, and then the guys are saying, Well, we didn't get this done because of this. So if you can't map out what good looks like or how it's done, then it's not ready to be handed over. That responsibility needs to be mapped out, written down, processed out before you can. So if you're struggling to explain it, then it's not ready to be handed over. So if the the thing only works, if the task only works because you're the one doing it, and you kind of just get through it by the skin of your teeth and it's all up here, then it's not ready. It's not ready, it's not a rule yet for somebody else to take over. So let's talk about the gap. The gap is why have you never defined what the rule is? And there's four reasons, and we're gonna go through them step by step. Number

Define What Good Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 5:44

one is that you don't know what good looks like, okay? So it's the thing that most business owners won't admit, okay? You've never worked out what the role actually is or what it entails. So you just know that you're drowning and you need help and you need to bring somebody else in and you need someone to take it off you, but you can't identify or know exactly what the outcome should be. Maybe you've been doing something for long enough, you don't even do it well anymore, and again, you're just doing it by getting through it by the skin of your teeth. So again, you don't actually know or can't identify what good looks like. So you could never explain it to somebody. So you hire a tradesman, okay? Say say you hire a donor, but a jorner to do to do what? To what standard? Owning what? You know, you don't know, so they won't know. I often hear this scenario of you bring in a guy, a new guy, and you're kind of stepping back for a week to see what happens or see how they get on. But I don't know if most of you even remember what it feels like, okay, because everybody on here is a business owner, you may have been a business owner for a very long time, and you forget what it feels like to enter a new business, working for a new guy. That person's also coming into sight and waiting on you to guide them to pinpoint out what they should be doing, how even though they know their job, they're fully qualified guy. But say you're a kitchen fitter, there's more than five or six methods to go around sequencing on how to fit a kitchen, what good looks like, what good practice is bad practices, how you finish something, how you don't, how you communicate with a client, what protection you put down. There's so many things that you could do different from your competitor. This guy may have come from somebody who cut a few corners here or there. He thinks it's okay. The method has always been we're trying to save a few quid here or there. Your method or your approach, which it should be, is no, we do things right, we do things the right way, even if it's a bit more expensive, but we're covered for that because that's the kind of product that we provide. Never just hire and hope. Okay, you need to bring somebody in, you need to show them the standard, you need to show them what's expected, you need to show them what good looks like, you need to show them what ownership looks like. Maybe it's the apprentice, you know, the apprentice doesn't come to you again. That you're now taking over the role, so you're having to actually map that out. And you're saying maybe it could be an office thing in case you're talking about a tradesman, but getting help with the office isn't a rule. That's just a feeling. I need help, and I need help with the office. That's a feeling or a hope. So if it only lives in your head, it doesn't exist because nobody can read your mind. You know, you have to, if you're bringing somebody into the office, you have to actually say, Here are the very rules that I need you to do. And again, we talked about how we how we figure that out. It's like what takes the most time, what's the slowest task, what do you hate doing, and again, how do you do that usually? What is it step by step by step? And that's pretty simple if we sit and think about it. So just because it's obvious to you over this last 20 years doesn't make it obvious to anybody else. So you need to set the expectation. Okay, it's never enough just to say, well, they should know what to do, or how do you not understand that? Just because you've been doing it for so long doesn't mean that anybody else can just come in, know your way of things, get used to how you like to do it, and just run

Your New Role After Hiring

SPEAKER_00 8:40

with it. So this is another big one, another massive one that people really overlook, and I don't hear anybody else talking about in this industry, or any industry for that matter. When somebody you bring somebody new into the business, you need to be clear on what your role now becomes. So you've your role has been to do X, Y, and Z, you're now bringing somebody else in to do X, Y, and Z. What's now your new role? Or what else does the business need to now implement that it didn't implement before? So maybe before it was just you and one other guy, you didn't really have a meeting, you didn't really do anything like that. Now you've brought somebody else in, people need to be brought up to speed. There's people on different projects, a meeting needs to happen once a week. If you're no longer doing the invoicing, if you're no longer doing the social media, you're bringing somebody else in to do that. What are you are you now doing with that time? Because what I often see business owners doing is they just end up falling into a trap of not really knowing what to do when they have that time, so they just end up jumping back in the site or doing the thing that actually, you know, they're just doing more of the same thing again, just a different task. The whole point in bringing team into this is to let you go and work on the business, do the founder work, meet the clients, bring in the work, review the pricing, hiring and firing, making a plan, strategizing, doing whatever it is you need to do to actually push the business forward. So you have to be very clear on what your role now is.

Become Number Two On Site

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Another conversation I had with a client recently is a fantastic uh example, is he brought in a new donor, a lead guy in his business. He he invests heavily in this guy, okay, pays him, pays him a premium, and this guy does a fantastic, fantastic job. This is a high-end genrey company, probably one of the best in the country. So this client, okay, has a number one donor, someone to replace him, and then an apprentice. And he's talking about maybe bringing in a second donor to work under the main donor that he's brought in heavily invested in. But he wasn't sure whether this lead donor could actually take the reins, or he wasn't maybe unsure, but he just didn't know how it would look. He didn't know whether you know how to even delegate that or tell him what the responsibility was or how it would even work out. So we put a simple test. When you're falling back into site after being in the office and doing what you need to do, do you fall back in as being the number one or do you fall in line as the number two and keep that lead that you've heavily invested in who does a great job? Are you keeping him as number one or are you coming and taking over? And of course, automatically and organically, you said, Well, when I'm on site, I then come back over as number one, he goes down to number two, and then the apprentice. And I said, Well, moving forward, a great way to see how this guy would take on this role or step up to this leadership, or so you can see how someone else would fill this number two role is you become the number two role. So when you're stepping into site, you become number two. You say, Jimmy, Johnny, whatever his name is, you're still the lead. I'm just here as a pair of hands. I know this might seem strange, but look, I'm gonna be dipping in and out because I have other things that we need to be doing to get this, keep this business moving forward. And the same as we Johnny the Apprentice, he's not coming to you for advice, he's going straight to your lead guy. So you're just falling in as the number two and the pair of hands. Then you can start to see and vision things and map things out as the number two, what the role looks like, what their daily tasks are, what kind of questions or queries are coming to the lead guy, how that lead guy is dealing with the queries, how he deals with the customer, all of those things. So again, even when the customer comes to site, it's like, yeah, look, I'm only jumping in here today, speak to Johnny. Johnny's got it all covered, he knows what he needs to do. If you need anything, just go to him. And even when you're on site, direct the client to him and let him run it and lead with things. You can actually see that it's like being a fly on the wall in your own business. So I would give anybody that advice when you do take somebody in to take the lead or take over, when you're stepping back into that role or you're on site for whatever reason, never step back in and take over. Always fall back into the second in command and keep that person

Fear And Doubt Delay Decisions

SPEAKER_00 12:26

in their role. So number two, and this is probably the reason why most people don't do anything, even whether they're afraid they met it or not, but everything I talk about, talk to clients about, talk to potential clients about, other business owners outside of this space and construction, most people delay decisions out of fear or out of doubt. So number two is fear and doubt. What if this doesn't work? What if they're useless? What if this costs me money? What if they leave in six months? What if I can't find anybody? Every one of those things has not happened. It may have happened to you before, and that's maybe why you have that fear or that hesitation. But just because it's happened once doesn't mean it'll happen again. There's also things outside of your control. So, say for example, there's an apprehension of really heavily investing in a team member in case they decide in a few years to go and do their own thing themselves. Well, that's something that is completely outside of your control. If that happens, it's gonna happen. But if you're going to keep somebody in a box, if you're gonna hold your own business back and yourself back, and somebody else from excelling in your business out of a fear that they might then go and do something else, is ridiculous. You're preempting something that may or may not ever happen. The other reason why there is fear or doubt is because you have never done it before, you've never seen anybody do it with success. You know, you've asked your your uncle, your brother. I always have this same scenario on these calls and with everybody else. You know, opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one, and everybody in this industry has a very strong opinion. And you know, you'll always hear the elders of the industry of I had 20, 30 men, it's not worth it. It's not just because they did it doesn't mean they did it right. Just because it happened to them doesn't mean it's gonna happen to you. And I'm telling you, how we talk about doing things in here are usually the way the things that people don't do it this way. Okay, it's you the things that we do in here are things that most of your competition and most people before you and most of your friends are not doing, they're not going through these processes, they're not taking these approaches to things, and you'll never hear anybody coming back and go, Yeah, this is what I done and this is what worked. Usually it's the negative, and usually what happens is because you haven't seen it, you don't believe in it. Okay, so that's where the doubt comes from, just because it hasn't been done before. But the reality is you're losing an argument that you've never had, or you've already lost or encountered a problem that has never happened. So you've run it in your head, you've run through the scenario, but this could happen, but that could happen, and you lose every single time. That's just human nature. People are programmed for failure over success. So how you behave is then you actually dodge something or avoid something that doesn't even exist yet. So these things aren't problems until they actually show up. That's kind of what I'm trying to get to. If this problem occurs or this problem happens, like I say to all my clients, well, they're fortunate they have me in their corner, let's not talk about or worry about a problem until it actually happens. Let's put our best food from not saying doing something but blankly without even thinking about it. What I mean is execute the plan. If we encounter a problem along the way, we will solve that problem when it comes. But don't prevent yourself or hold back from trying to execute a plan or doing something that actually pushes business forward in case you come across a problem or in case something might happen, because it hasn't happened yet or it may never happen. And at the end of the day, all of these problems that you're putting in place that haven't happened yet, you're avoiding the real problem right now is the fact that you're still doing everything yourself.

Outcome Over Method In Delegation

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Number three, your expectation. This is another huge one that I get all the time. You're waiting to find somebody as good as you, you won't necessarily find that, okay, and you don't need to, is what I'm here to say. Yes, you may find somebody to do it better than you, and that is always the goal, but that might not happen instantaneously. You could always get somebody into your business and train them to be better than you, absolutely. When you're stepping back and you have the time to improve your processes, you get to look things through different lens, and you can actually put better things in place, then absolutely that task can now be done better than you ever done it yourself before. But the expectation can't be that you're trying to find that person to come into your business and fix all the problems. That's never gonna happen. The responsibility comes from you, so you don't need a clone, you need somebody who can hit the standard, and that's two different things, and it doesn't have to be done your exact way, okay. So, especially when it comes to a task, okay. So, I'm not talking about the outcome, okay. I'm talking about the task itself. So, we're gonna define the outcome and not the method. So, just because you have a way of doing things, it doesn't mean that your way is automatically the best, it's just the way you've always done it. But again, there's a difference between the method, so again, in tr in trade terms, that's maybe how you would solder a 15mm elbow on the a bit of copper. That could be how you fit a kitchen door to a carcass. That could be how you wire up X, Y, and Z. Okay, so there's maybe several ways or different ways as you can approach that. You could put one wire in first and another wire in second. Other people say no, I only do it this way. Again, as long as the outcome is defined as in here's what we want the outcome to be. We want a safe, reliable, good product, blah, blah, blah. You know, defend the outcome, not the method. So essentially, how you get to that outcome is somewhat irrelevant as long as the good practices have been put in place and you've outlined those. So you have to kind of outline, you know, what has to be true at the end. This is the outcome. How they get to there can be theirs to own. Obviously, we're gonna caveat that by saying good workmanship, not what you can't see didn't happen. You know, obviously there's good practice has to be involved there, but again, you know, whether somebody puts a plaster piece of plasma on this way or upside down, it kind of is kind of irrelevant. Whether they put the bottom screen and the top screen is irrelevant, but if as long as it's screwed in sufficiently and it's secure, then that's it. That's what we talk about, defining the outcome, you know, not the method. So we'll finish that topic by saying different isn't wrong, and you know, that's what's gonna if you say that to yourself, you know, somebody's doing something different, you're looking at it and going, I'd love to step in here and take over because I wouldn't do it that way, I would put it in this way. But again, the outcome is exactly the same. You have to say to yourself that different isn't wrong, okay. Again, it is outcome over method. So the last one on this piece before we move on, before we move on to section four, and this is the one that maybe nobody wants to admit, you may bring somebody in that is better than you, better ideas, and you maybe feel threatened. Maybe your ego gets a wee bit of a touch. You know, you'll want your two cents in everywhere because it makes you feel important, it makes you feel needed, it makes you seen seen as the leader, as the owner. People might start going to them instead of you. The guys on site might look to them for leadership or what's going next. The client might say, God, you know, Steven was fantastic. You know, I love Stephen being on site here, you know. Absolutely worse, he and you know, next thing is the phone stops ringing as much, and you know, you're you're talking to your guy on site, he's going, Yeah, no, the client's 100%. I've had it all boxed out, and I've told them X, Y, and Z, and you're going, Oh, why are you having conversations with look? Again, I've been there, I know where people are coming from with this, and until it happens, you won't know, but it could already be happening under your nose. You maybe haven't, you know, you've been afraid to admit it. But that's what you want to happen. That's the whole point. That's the business that you're trying to build, so you can't feel threatened when somebody comes over, comes in, and actually does this thing that you employed them to do, which is completely take over, take ownership, and you know, you're able to check in, have conversations with them again. We're not talking about turning your back on and never looking at it again. We're having regular check-ins, they're keeping you up to speed, but that's what you wanted. You want to be, you know, you don't want to be the smartest person in the room, you don't want to be the best person in the room in your business. You want to take these people in who can lead, who can manage, and take these outcomes and responsibilities away from you. Okay,

Letting Go Without Losing Identity

SPEAKER_00 20:06

so number four, and we talked about this in the previous session. If you haven't seen the last session, it perfectly complements this, it runs right into it. So if you haven't seen last week's episode, please go back, watch it again. It's short, it's sweet, it's to the point, as always, and it's a fantastic way to lean in to this session. If I let go, what am I for? So nobody says this out loud, but it is definitely the elf in the room. If I hand this over, am I still needed? So on the last episode we talked about what your new role becomes and getting very clear on what your new role is when somebody else comes in. And being and again, it kind of feeds back in exactly to my last point, the last point in number three there. But feeling feeling needed is like proof that you matter, so you hold on to the very thing thing that makes you feel needed, and again, especially that if there's something that you've been doing for so long and something that's been this way for for decades, for which is the case for most of us, it is going to be very, very uncomfortable. None of this is going to be easy, none of this is going to feel comfortable or normal. There's going to be apprehension, there's going to be fear, but you have to ask yourself, you know, take the emotion out of it and look for things at face values, what they actually are. What are the problems that are happening, and deal with them then rather than going, you know, being worried about what's happening, because if you wish something to happen, it absolutely will. What happens when you're kind of holding on to being important, or what happens to holding on to everything that makes you feel needed? You'll probably do it quite quietly. Okay, you'll you won't really define the rule clearly. You'll maybe not give away full responsibility, maybe give some away. You maybe won't train them properly on the role, you won't take the time and attention, you'll probably go, let's see what he does, and then we'll make a decision on it. Okay, you'll take it back the first time, it's not perfect. Then you'll fold your arms and say, See, totally nobody can do it like me. Just can't be done, doesn't work, can't take anybody in, it's not happening. You've set yourself up for failure because you've never. Really, maybe that you've never really wanted it, but again, you've never really believed in it because you didn't do what we talked about in the last episode, which was detaching from the ownership of it. So you like the idea of the business running without you, but you maybe just didn't want it enough to do the uncomfortable bit. So again, I've already touched on it, but every fear that you've got about somebody coming in, you're kind of preempting it, okay? You're wishing it into existence. I don't care whether you believe in this stuff or not, okay, but it is true. If you don't believe that somebody will succeed at something, they won't. If you're hell bent on proving yourself right or falling into your narrative of doesn't work in this industry, you can't just you just can't get them in. The industry doesn't have them. But what you'll end up doing is you'll micromanage somebody out the door. Then say you knew it wouldn't work all along. You'll always find something to fall in with your narrative. So if you whatever you believe is true, like I said in the last episode, you're right. You know, but you can't control whether someone decides to leave. You know, you never could, okay? But you can always see it coming if you're looking at it through the right lens. You can always map these things out, you can always deal with problems better that the more they're they're they're mapped out and executed properly. But you can't run a business on fear, hoping that the bad thing doesn't happen. So that's not a strategy, that's just waiting for something to happen, and inevitably it will. So the

Standards You Tolerate Set The Bar

SPEAKER_00 23:15

last one outside of these four points that we talked about is before taking anybody else in to fulfill a role, you need to look at what you've been walking past and what you've been letting slip. So, what have you been tolerating as a business owner? So, walking past could be the mess of the site, it could be something just not finished quite right, it could be the state of the van or the state of the appearance of guys in their uniform, it could be whatever. Before you take somebody else new into the business, you need to ensure that the standard is set. If you're walking past these things and turning a blind eye to them to avoid having an awkward conversation, before bringing somebody else in, you'll want to fix those problems because you want to make sure the standard and the bar is set. Because if you know, if you've been letting things slip, then same as what you might say to your kids, don't do as I do, do as I say. Monkey see, monkey do. If you're letting things slip, and the first sign of you letting something go, then you're setting the standard and telling your team that it's okay, and they will just fall to that standard, they won't maintain the standard without you. If you can't maintain your own standard, if you're letting standard slip, then they will fall to that standard. Okay, they won't they won't uphold that for you. That is your responsibility as a business owner. Also think about the things that you have stopped doing as a business owner, and this is why we get clear on what your new role becomes when somebody else comes in. But if you've stopped having the hurdles, if you've stopped doing your reports, if you've stopped doing your invoicing on time, you know, you need to get back into a sequence or a way of doing things, or at least get it mapped out so that the standard is set for somebody else coming in. So if you've been letting your own standard slip or walking past certain things, make sure you make those fixes because again, the team don't do what you say, they will do what you tolerate. So you need to ask yourself what of those four things apply to you? It could be all four, but is it not knowing what good looks like? Is it the fear? Is it your expectation, or or are you scared of not being needed anymore? The uncomfortable pit. If you answer that honestly, you're halfway to fixing it. So last

The Rule Definition Blueprint Offer

SPEAKER_00 25:16

week we took our private mentees through this exact framework and we gave them a document called the rule definition blueprint, and it was how you actually start to define those rules and how we actually conquer those four things that we just spoke about. So if you're in that position in business with your trading construction business and you want to take in team, or you want to just give another team member more responsibility, and you could use this framework to take any scenario through it and define a rule, drop me the word blueprint in the comments below or reach out to me and DM me in any of our social platforms.