Inspired Trades Business Coaching

I have been on the professional speaking circuit now for more than twelve months and I always enjoy visiting the builders and building trades in Western Australia.

Today I had the pleasure of being the key note speaker at the annual Housing Industry Association Building Breakfast event at Frasers Restaurant in Kings Park Perth WA.  

As is usually the case the delegates in the room were fascinated to hear what is making the difference between successful trades and building businesses and those that struggle or fail. I shared the top three including clarity of purpose, an actionable strategy and a mind that’s closed to negativity.

Sadly negative mindset is holding back so many businesses that would otherwise thrive if they could get just those three essentials in place and supported or reinforced by regular business coaching.

Pricing work as new home builder in Australia can be difficult and time consuming as suppliers and subcontractors are constantly moving their prices (usually upwards) and keeping track of it all is challenging. Builders and their estimators usually have one of two options: prepare a detailed bill of quantities that calculates costs line by line; or throw a square meter rate at it.

Neither of these options for quoting are sensible. Most clients assume you are doing a detailed bill of quantities (although most are not prepared to pay for the quote) but most builders are throwing square meter rates at the quotes because they don’t have the time or the systems to do it any other way.

As a residential builder I faced the same problem. I didn’t have the time to quote everything in detail but I knew a square meter rate was dangerous and problematic so what I did over the course of fifteen years with the help of a software coder was write iGyro. This dedicated builders’ job management software includes a systemised way to produce accurate and fast quotes for all types of new homes without needing to spend days on the task. We have calculated that the average time to produce accurate quotes from the system is twenty minutes (faster on some designs).’

Not only are the quotes fast for the builder to prepare but they are also formatted easily for the client to understand. I personally have proven that a properly trained user of this quoting tool for builders can achieve margins within a two-percentage accuracy range which is exactly the same margin of error as any other estimating process.

This quoting software is the only boutique solution in the Australian market now that you can be trained and mentored in the use off by a builder and industry specialist, Glenn Leet. Glenn will personally train his coaching clients on the use of iGyro and the quotation module until mastery is achieved by the user.

A fog of burnout surrounds you: You’re perpetually exhausted, annoyed, and feeling unsatisfied and unappreciated. Everything in you wants to quit your business. But is that the best choice?

Various models help to explain and predict burnout, which is now an official medical diagnosis, according to the World Health Organization. One, called the Areas of Worklife model (drawn from research by Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter of the University of California at Berkeley and Acadia University, respectively) identifies six areas where you could experience imbalances that lead to burnout. As a business coach, I’ve seen that some individuals can make positive shifts in one or more of these areas and then happily stay in their current business.

Here are the six areas that can lead to burnout.

1. Workload. When you have a workload that matches your capacity, you can effectively get your work done, and have opportunities for rest and recovery. When you chronically feel overloaded, these opportunities to restore balance don’t exist.

To address the stress of your workload, assess how well you’re doing in these key areas: planning your workload, prioritizing your work, delegating tasks, saying no, and letting go of perfectionism. If you haven’t been doing one or more of these things, try to make progress in these time management skill areas and then see how you feel. For many individuals, especially those who have a bent toward people pleasing, some proactive effort on reducing their workload can significantly reduce feelings of burnout and provide space to rest.

2. Perceived lack of control. Feeling like you lack autonomy, access to resources, and a say in decisions that impact your business life can take a toll on your well-being. If you find yourself feeling out of control, step back and ask yourself, “What exactly is causing me to feel this way?”

Then ask yourself what you can do to shift this situation. Once you’ve considered these areas, you can then see what you can do to influence your environment versus what won’t change no matter what you say or do.

3. Reward. If the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards for your job don’t match the amount of effort and time you put in to them, then you’re likely to feel like the investment is not worth the payoff.

In these instances, you want to look within and determine exactly what you would need to feel properly rewarded. For example, perhaps you need to increase your prices. Or perhaps you need to take advantage of the rewards you’ve already accrued, such as taking the ability to work your own hours or take leave when you choose. Experiment to see which rewards would make what you’re doing worth it to you and whether there is the opportunity to receive more of those rewards within your current building trades business.

4. Community. Who do you work with or around? How supportive and trusting are those relationships? In many cases you can’t change your colleagues and clients, but you can improve the dynamic. It could be as simple as taking the time to ask others how their day is going — and really listening. Or sending an email to someone to let them know you appreciated their work. Or choosing to communicate something difficult in a respectful, nonjudgmental way. Burnout can be contagious, so to elevate your individual engagement, you must shift the morale of the group.

5. Fairness. Think about whether you believe that you receive fair and equitable outcomes for your efforts. For example, do you get acknowledged for your contributions or do other individuals get praised and your work goes unnoticed?

6. Values mismatch. If you highly value something that your business partner does not, your motivation to work hard and persevere can significantly drop. Ideals and motivations tend to be deeply ingrained in individuals and organizations. When you’re assessing this element of burnout, you need to think carefully about how important it is to you to match your values with those of your team.

Burnout isn’t simply about being tired. It’s a multifaceted issue that requires a well thought through solution. Before you quit, really think through what exactly is contributing to your burnout and attempt to make changes.

Most building industry professionals recognize the importance of networking for their business. While attending conferences or scheduling meetups are great ways to connect with others, an often overlooked (or avoided) approach is organizing a larger event yourself.

Hosting your own events enables you to build relationships more strategically than a conference typically allows, because you’re controlling the guest list, and as the convener, you get “credit” for the connections your guests make with one another.

Many of my clients who are looking to scale their business have trailed this approach and find it much easier than initially expected: you don’t need a special skill set, and the logistics don’t have to be overwhelming.

If you’re interested in organizing your own networking gathering, here are five strategies you can use to curate your attendees and bring a fascinating mix of people together.

Think strategically about educating your audience. 

People will attend your event if it focuses on solving a problem they already have (or will have in the future). For example, if you want to build credibility as a building renovator convene events that educate attendees on the best practice renovation techniques in your chosen niche.

Decide if your event will have a theme.

One way to guarantee attendees have something to talk about is to convene guests who may not know each other, but have something in common.  Using the previous example, you might focus on all the architects and building designers at one event, and a second event focused on retail customers.

Consider recruiting a co-host.

But what if you feel like you don’t know enough people to invite? Think about non-competing businesses that have the same customer as you and are also interested in growing their business and reinforcing their credibility in the market. This will also have the effect of increasing the credibility and appeal to the audience of the event as it won’t be as easily perceived as a marketing stunt. This enables us to take pressure off at the event (there are two people who can make sure the conversation is moving smoothly), as well as cross-pollinate our social networks and meet new people.

Leverage existing contacts to build your guest list.

Once you’ve hosted someone at a successful seminar, they become an ambassador of sorts. They understand what the events are like, so they have a sense of who else would make a good attendee and be eager to attend. You can leverage this dynamic to fill subsequent events with interesting guests. Follow up with your guests afterward, asking if they have friends they think would enjoy attending in the future, and if they would introduce you.

Networking is essential for business success, yet only a small percentage of building trade businesses actually make the effort to host event — often because they don’t know where to start with assembling a guest list. By following the strategies above, you can bring together remarkable people and deepen professional relationships that will prove critical in the years to come.

Profitability and Performance Business Coaching Workshop Event Calendar

This is where you will learn how to take your business to the NEXT LEVEL, whatever that looks like for you.

We teach you how to systemise your business,  how to market your business, how to achieve the next thing for your business and we show you how to do it.

We get what we tolerate, so if you tolerate mediocrity in your own leadership you will see it reflected in your team.  If you put the right Trades Business owner with the right coach,  anything is possible.  

Book yourself in to the next workshop in your area, and encourage your mates who are Trades Business owners to do the same.

Here’s the links to register:

BRISBANE WORKSHOP - 13th June

ARMIDALE WORKSHOP -  28th June

COFFS HARBOUR WORKSHOP - 11th July

SYDNEY (Schofields) WORKSHOP - 18th July

Motivation — the willingness to get the job done by starting rather than procrastinating, persisting in the face of distractions, and investing enough mental effort to succeed.

There are four motivation traps, they are:

1) I don’t care about what we are trying to achieve 2) lack of self-belief, 3) volatile emotions, and 4) blaming something or someone else.

Here are the ways to release an employee (or yourself) from its clutches.

Trap 1, I don’t care about what we are trying to achieve.

Find out what the employee cares about and connect it to the task. Too often, managers think about what motivates themselves and assume the same is true of their employees.

Sometimes it may be necessary to ask an employee to, essentially, hold their nose while carrying out an undesirable task — making clear to them the future benefit its completion will yield or the problems it will prevent.

When an employee doesn’t value a task at the outset and the values mismatch may not be apparent, a manager’s best bet is to try to appeal to multiple values. One or more of them may resonate with the employee.

Trap 2, Lack of Self-Belief.

Build the employee’s sense of confidence and competence. This can be done in several ways. One is to point out times in the past when they’ve surmounted similar challenges. Perhaps share examples of others just like them who overcame the same challenges in a way the employee can do, too.

Trap 3, Volatile Emotions.

Begin in a setting where you cannot be overheard. Tell them you want to understand why they are upset and engage in active listening. Do not agree or disagree. Be nonjudgmental by asking what the employee believes is causing them to be upset. Then, briefly summarize what they said back to them and ask if you have understood. If they say “no,” apologize and tell them you are listening carefully and to “please try again.”  When people feel they have been understood, their negative emotions soften a bit. It may be useful to tell them that you want to consider what they told you and schedule a time the next day to discuss. This often helps the person get more control over their emotions.

Trap 4, Blaming Something or Someone Else

Help the employee think clearly about the cause of their struggles with a task. Helping the employee identify exactly why the task seems insurmountable can help them move past such avoidance. If they identify a cause that’s out of their control (blaming other people, for example, or a flaw in themselves that can’t be fixed), suggest other causes that are under their control, such as the need to adopt a new strategy or to apply a greater level of planning.

With each of these four motivation traps, the trick is to think more comprehensively about what stops employees from initiating, persisting, and putting in mental effort and then coach, coach, coach.

What do you need to be happy?

Of course, we know it’s not stuff that makes us happy.  Instead, real and lasting happiness comes from something different entirely; something elegantly simple and entirely attainable. 

So, what’s the answer for lasting happiness?  

PROGRESS.

If you aren’t growing, you are dying.  It turns out that happiness that is true and lasting is quite simply this: progress. If you are growing and giving, you will be happy.  If you are moving forward in your life, if you are progressing personally, professionally, emotionally, spiritually — you will be happy.  It is only in stagnation that we wilt.

Remember the adage “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  We all know it’s true, so the real question is what have you been meaning to do that you’re afraid to tackle?  What journey are you longing to take but can’t seem to get started?  Is it the journey to improve your building trades business, or upskill your leadership?  If you set a goal, and move towards it, step by step, it is in that movement, that progress, that you will find true happiness.

What can you do to start along the path to progress and move toward happiness tomorrow? Find a business coach the specialises in building trades and book your first appointment. Once you start down that path, you’re certain to find the joy you desire and deserve.

Here are five of the most important profit strategy considerations I’ve encountered in a long career using strategy and advising building and trades companies about it:

Strategy is not about the long-term

Thinking about strategy as some kind of long-term commitment can blind you to the fact that strategy is not about the long term or the short term, but about the fundamentals of how the business works: the sources of value creation, the drivers of the cost to deliver it, and the basis of competition.  To get a grip on strategy, we do not need to lengthen the time horizon of our thinking, but its depth. Far from being about things we are going to do in the future, strategy is about what we are going to do now in order to shape the future to our advantage.

Become an Influencer

Your clients will pay you in direct proportion to the amount of confidence they have in you. How can you give them confidence in you and thereby increase your pay grade? The key is to demonstrate your skills and industry knowledge in every available way at every available time in every available forum. Sound challenging? Your results are a lagging indicator of your habits so if you’re not happy with your results you know what you need to do … become an industry influencer.

Competitive advantage is essential

The truth is that you need to rely on multiple advantages rather than just the one. What do you have that allows you to compete at an unfair advantage? Is it location, is it skills, is it unique processes, is it cost advantages? Find what these things are than focus your business on maximising your unfair competitive advantage in the market.

Being agile won’t compensate for strategy

Agile trade businesses – especially start-ups – are always turning on a dime and they certainly don’t seem to be following any kind of plan.  Easy enough, then, to assume that what you see an agile firm doing – acting at high speed, maintaining a high tempo, being highly responsive – is all there is.

Agility is not a strategy.  It is a capability, a very valuable one which has immediate operational benefits, but that cannot permanently affect a firm’s competitive position unless there is a strategist taking the right decisions about where to direct that capability.  And the seeming absence of a plan doesn’t mean that successful start-ups don’t have strategies.  A strategy is not a plan, it is a framework for decision-making, a set of guiding principles which can be applied as the situation evolves.  And most start-ups fail because being able to turn on a dime doesn’t mean that you’ll turn in the right direction.  Successful start-ups actually do a lot of hard thinking about fundamentals, questioning and testing basic assumptions with a rigour that older businesses would do well to emulate.   Start-ups have to, because their resources are extremely scarce.  If they don’t have a coherent strategy, they will make poor resource allocation decisions, and for them that will not mean a fall in earnings, but death.

You need a digital strategy

Digital technology is a way of collecting, storing and using information, and information is everywhere. In its early stages, it enabled us to do what we did already but better.  Then it enabled us to do it a lot better.  Then it enabled us to do things we had never done before.  Building trade businesses without a digital strategy will never maximise their profit potential.

In our uncertain world, fundamentals are changing so we need to think about them, whether they are valid in the short- or long-term.  Think how you can deploy the capabilities you have and build new ones you need to defend your competitive position. Add them in layers to create barriers. Be clear about what will make a difference so that you can make rapid resource allocation decisions. Think deep to act fast. Strategy is still what it has always been: the art of taking action under the pressure of the most difficult conditions.

Let Inspired Trades Business Coaching help you with your profit margins,  so that you can work less and earn more. 

One of our Coaching Clients 👍🏼

Is your work and business life sapping the joy out of your home and family?

You’re not alone. Stress is a part of most jobs. Here are five ways to operate your business successfully without adding stress to the lives of the very people who most want to support you.

Communicate — carefully. 

When you’re not fully present at home because you’re distracted by work, your family might interpret your lack of attention to mean that you don’t value them or that they did something wrong. Instead, be transparent about what’s going on.

But don’t over communicate to the point of worrying young minds with problems that might overly concern them. Keep it brief and assure them you have it under control.

Transition - intentionally. 

Come up with ways to intentionally make the transition from work mode to home mode. You might look at a family photo before you leave work as a way to redirect your focus to your family.

Download - elsewhere. 

Your family provides you with support and is sensitive to your stressors and moods. Although it’s helpful to communicate with them about what’s on your mind, be sure not to unload all your pent-up emotions on them.

Find a trusted friend, colleague, or coach — or maybe someone from your personal board of directors — who can support you during times of high stress.

Set a day aside – every week. 

Let your family know when you’ll be home and fully present and agree on a day. On this day, you need to switch off the phone, stay away from the computer and plan special events and fun.

Count your blessings. 

Research shows that gratitude has many benefits, including reduced stress. Before you get home, review your workday to identify one thing — no matter how small — for which you’re grateful.

By using these strategies you will loosen the grip stress has on you and preserve your family life from work stress.

Don’t waste any more time trying to make ends meet. Engage a business coach who will help you increase your profitability and take your business to the next level.

For more information head over to

https://inspiremenow.com.au/trades-business-coaching

How do you achieve goals if you don’t even know how to set them?  How do you stay accountable to those goals so that your business reaches the next level? Both great questions, am I right?  

Inspired Trades Business Coaching is helping Trades Business owners set and achieve goals.  If you are stuck in a rut and can’t get off that hamster wheel... profits are low, time is limited and you just can’t seem to get ahead,  well,  we have good news for you!  There is hope.  We show you how.  Our systems are tried and proven and they work

Go to    https://inspiremenow.com.au/trades-business-coaching

As employers we surround ourselves with staff that have different skills to us, but our responsibility as leaders is to provide a workplace environment where they can expand and grow those skills. This has the benefit of our people enjoying their work and has a net benefit to the business as a whole.  It always translates into increased profitability for the business and business owners.  

But there are some very specific do’s and don’ts around providing that environment for workplace improvement, and the feedback that you give can either create great outcomes for the employee or just really stall them in terms of their improvement.  

So this is how you help your people thrive:

Firstly, it’s all in the language, so essentially critical feedback is entirely unproductive. Critical feedback is perceived as a threat, and it actually impairs learning rather than enables it.  So when you try to help an employee in areas to improve you need to think about different language. Instead of saying,  “Can I give you some feedback”, which straight away comes across as a negative, you are looking for a different way to frame language like that, so you might say “look here’s the way I see that”, so straight away you’re reframing the way you give the feedback so that it doesn’t come across as a critical.

Instead of saying, ‘here’s what you did wrong’, you could say, ‘these are the three things that really worked for me when I did that task or when I tried to get that outcome’.

Instead of saying ‘’here’s what you should do’, you could say ‘here’s what I would do’, so the language is framing an environment for openness in receiving information, rather than closing their mind.

Instead of saying ‘here’s what you need to improve’, say ‘here’s what worked best for me and here’s why’.

Or if their communication is not great you could say…’it was at this point that you started to lose me’, ‘

So, you can see that the message you are communicating is the same but the angle you are coming from is completely changed and opens the employee up to learning.

We are often told that you need to get someone out of their comfort zone to learn or to be challenged and grow, but the research actually suggests the exact opposite, you have got to try and grow people from inside their comfort zone. If you take people outside their comfort zone, their brain stops paying attention to anything other than surviving the experience, for example; of potentially being belittled or told or what they did wrong and there’s no learning going on whatsoever.

So the best outcomes for employee growth and improvement and learning are creating an environment where the employee feels comfortable, and then adding to their knowledge base whilst in a place of comfort, then you will find that they are very open. When they are open, their minds are creative, insightful and productive and that’s where feedback is the most effective in terms of moving employees forward in their knowledge and understanding of the learning they need to achieve the best outcomes.

Consistency, with the right formula for your business, is key to success.  A great Coach will identify your needs, where you are at,  where you want to go in your business, and step by step, will help you to set and achieve one goal after another! 

CLICK HERE to  Book an online, obligation free Strategy Session with Inspired Trades Business Coaching today.  We will guarantee, coaching can take you to whatever your NEXT LEVEL is, in your business. 

Or head to this link below:

https://bookme.name/inspiremenow/strategic-business-analysis