Enjoy the Benefits of Business Ownership
by Marcy Marro | 1 June 2021 12:00 am
The top two reasons entrepreneurs go into business are the pursuit of freedom and wealth. Freedom from working for someone else and the ability do business as they please. Freedom to say no to bad customers, jobs, employees or contracts. And the freedom to go to work if and when they want! Wealth creates financial security and a lifestyle that allows them to make decisions how they spend their time and money without worry. Wealth also allows owners to hire the best managers to run their companies and invest in people, systems, equipment and technology.
Unfortunately, freedom and wealth are not the norm for most smaller growing $1 million to $15 million revenue construction business owners. When owners work too many hours on contracts, purchasing, scheduling, estimating, project management or field supervision versus business strategy, coaching people, and building customer relationships, they don’t make enough money or have time to reach their goals.
For those owners who are working more and more, not making enough money for the time invested, and enjoying it less and less, consider these questions:
- Does earning a living give you time to do any living?
- Do you ever stop and wish it would get better?
- What’s it going to take to make it work for you?
- Are you too busy working to make any money?
The More You Do, The Less You Make!
When you spend all your time doing small work, you aren’t spending time doing the important big strategic things that can move your company to the next level. When you are overworked, you can’t create enough time to seek better opportunities, customers or project types with higher margins against less competition. And when you do too much yourself, you can’t build wealth, make good money and have the freedom to enjoy the benefits of business ownership.
When I talk to business owners, many say they aren’t happy with their company, management team, customers or financial results. Yet they stay in business doing what they know how to do because they don’t know what else to do. They aren’t sure what to fix first, hesitate to hire professional managers and don’t want to invest in major improvements to get their business to work. My conclusion is that most business owners become comfortable being uncomfortable and get used to the pain.
Choose to Take Control of Your Future!
What are you doing that you should delegate? I recently helped several of my BIZCOACH construction business owner clients draft plans to achieve better results. Each client has 30 or more managers and employees on their teams who are competent, good, qualified people. But the biggest problem I observed was owners who were doing what they shouldn’t be doing. For example, I observed one of them setting up their field superintendent’s computer, ordering snap ties for concrete forms, meeting all field workers daily at the shop at 6 a.m., going to Staples to pick up printer ink, dropping by The Home Depot to get plywood for the field, scheduling the mechanic to repair a broken-down truck, meeting a concrete saw-cutter at a job site to lay out work, and doing all project receivable invoices for all their jobs. What I didn’t observe was him creating time to meet with a new major customer who was willing to award them a significant amount of work.
Do What You Should Do!
To start enjoying the benefits of business ownership start with doing what you should do versus what you are currently doing. Make a list of everything you can delegate to your current staff and give it to them to handle going forward. Keep a list of these responsibilities and check in with them weekly.
Next, decide what else you could do if you had more help. For example, by hiring a project administrator and assistant, you could delegate duties including job set-up, managing the submittal and shop drawing process, keeping track of the estimating schedule, filling out bid documents, entering all invoices for your review, tracking equipment maintenance, organizing all job reports and documentation, coordinating the hiring and recruitment process, scheduling meetings for you, keeping track of anything you need, and leveraging your time to be more efficient. For a small amount of money, this one additional person would improve your time management enough to allow you to go out and build relationships with better customers or mentor your managers to accept more responsibility.
Freedom and Wealth!
To create more freedom, you have to decide to put yourself first and take more time off. One of the best decisions I made as I grew my company to $50 million in annual sales, was to leave the office every Friday afternoon and play golf with my close group of pals. As a result, I gained life-long friendships and forced myself to be more efficient at the office. Guess what? Working less hours actually made me more focused to achieve my goals as I had to delegate and concentrate on doing high priority things with the highest return.
To start building wealth, I worked hard on seeking higher margin customers and projects, and spent time developing opportunities to invest our efforts into income producing properties. Start doing what gives you the highest return on your time and let go of the small things others are capable of handling as part of their jobs.
George Hedley, CSP, CPBC, helps contractors grow and profit as a professional business coach, popular speaker and peer group leader. He is the author of “Get Your Construction Business to Always Make a Profit!” and “Hardhat BIZSCHOOL Online University,” available on his website. Visit www.hardhatbizschool.com[1] for more information.
- www.hardhatbizschool.com: http://www.hardhatbizschool.com
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