Put Your Priorities First to Achieve Results!

by Marcy Marro | 1 July 2021 12:00 am

By George Hedley

Many years ago, I was in this same place as my business controlled my personal and professional life, I worked too hard, did too much myself, and put my priorities on the back burner. After reading a bookshelf of business books on how to manage a successful business, I decided to go to a workshop to change how I run my business and develop a plan to enjoy the benefits of a company working for me. The next day, I got to work early and made a detailed priority list of all the responsibilities and tasks I had to handle and accomplish. Then I prioritized the activities into three columns—high must-do priorities, should-do medium priorities, and not important low-priority tasks.

Then it happened like every other day for the past 10 years–several phone calls from customers needing answers, e-mails requiring immediate attention, interruptions from a project manager wanting an approval, an estimator wanting me to review a bid due today, a demand from a large subcontractor wanting to get paid, and a request for an emergency meeting with a job-site superintendent having major field problems. By the end of the day, I realized I hadn’t even looked at my priority list. Now what?

What’s the purpose for owning your business?
The purpose for ownership is to give the owners what they want for the investment and risk they take. Most business owners want their company to build wealth and investments via making significant profits over time; and having a strong management team with structure, systems and processes to allow them to enjoy plenty of freedom and personal time. A business that works always is on purpose and on target according to your priorities. What will make your business on purpose for you? Do you want your business to work for you rather you working for your business?

What Do You Want?

To make this happen takes a well-developed written business plan with a clear vision of what you want. And specific targets and goals clearly defining how you will accomplish and deliver the results you want to achieve in your business and personal life. Answer these questions to determine what you want:

What would a perfect business and personal life look like?
What’s the vision of what you want your business to become?
How do you want to do business?
How big do you want your business to become?
How much money do you want to make?
What are your financial and equity goals?
What do you want your role to be?
Do you want a management team to run your business?
Do you want to build a great place to work that attracts and retains great people?
Do you want to be organized and systemized?
Do you want to know your numbers and job costs?
Do you want to have accurate pricing and estimating?
Do you want loyal high-margin or low-bid customers and work?
Do you want to build wealth and have income producing investments?
Do you want to have more free time to spend with your family and friends?

Prioritize and Commit!

To achieve the results you want, you must commit to make your vision become reality. First make you your top priority, and commit to fix and do something about yourself. Then you can start working on how you improve your business, how you manage and stop micro-managing, how you hire and build a management team, how you stop tolerating poor performers, how you delegate and trust people, how you develop and enforce systems, how you focus on the numbers, how you seek higher margin customers, and most importantly— how you commit to your priorities first. If you keep putting yourself second, things won’t change as you continue to react to situations, problems, challenges and make other people’s priorities yours.

Be on purpose and on target! Resolve every day to know what you want. Focus on your personal priorities first and business demands second. Make progress everyday toward achieving your personal and professional goals. And don’t postpone your personal life for business pressures.

Get Tickets!

When you continue to put your business pressures first, you tend to postpone your personal life. To put yourself and your priorities first, start buying tickets. When you buy tickets months in advance of events or activities like NFL football games, vacations, music concerts, golf tournaments with customers, hunting or fishing trips, family events, industry events with customers, special dinner reservations, or three-day weekends, they become a top priority. When you buy tickets, they’re on your calendar, you don’t miss them, and don’t schedule business commitments on those dates or times. When asked to meet on those times, all you have to say is “Sorry, I have tickets!” To work on your top business priorities, put time into your calendar for important activities like management meetings, field supervisor meetings, customer lunches, and times to work on your business systems or strategy areas.

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.

Endnotes:

www.hardhatbizschool.com: http://www.hardhatbizschool.com

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