Are you a Tradie or a Boss?
It all started with an apprenticeship. Being told what to do, working to a deadline. There’s shit to do and you have to do it. As a Tradie it’s good to have the mindset of ‘put your head down and get on with it’. That’s how the job gets done.
As a Boss, you need a totally different mindset. It’s your job to hold the big picture for your team, the vision for the business. It’s your job to steer the ship and keep everything moving towards your ultimate goal. It’s your job to be in control of your business.?
That means staying focused, making sure you prioritise your priorities, and making sure your decisions are made with your priorities in mind.
As a Tradie you can stop what you’re doing and respond to the thing that pops up. As a Boss, you can’t.
Too many trades business owners make this mistake. They’re still performing as though they’re a Tradie – reacting to everything that comes up as though it has ultimate priority.?
One of the reasons this happens is that as a trades business owner you’re busy. Lots to do. Seems like not enough hours in the day. Feels like you can’t let go and hand over the reins to the boys and that you have to be in control all the time.
Obviously, this creates a bottleneck and giving over control is something you’ll need to come to terms with at some point. We can talk about that later.
Let’s focus on busy for the moment. When we have lots to do it can be stressful. Can feel like nothing ever gets completed or if it does you’re straight onto the next thing. It’s both natural and human to want to do the things that are either right in front of you or seem urgent. We get a dopamine hit when we finish something, or tick it off the list. Dopamine is the cocaine high. That’s why people love to-do lists. Probably not as much as they love cocaine.?
There’s also a concept called hyperbolic discounting. There’s a famous study where the majority of people who are offered $50 today or $100 in a week will choose the $50 today. They choose the smaller good today over the larger good later. That’s pretty stupid right! You only have to wait a week for twice the money. But most people will choose the $50.?
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So what happens is people make radically worse decisions when thinking about the present or short-term.?
Think about how that applies to your business. How often do you go for the $50 at the expense of the $100?
Do you cancel important meetings because Mrs Jones is a bit upset about the angle of her pantry shelf?
Jon likes helping business owners and especially owners of trades businesses. Life can be a bit frustrating when you run a business and a trade business can be even more so.
If you're a tradie and you've got successful then you probably feel like your life is not your own, that you are always making sure everyone else is OK before you and you never get everything done. You probably work too many hours each week and take your work home with you and you probably don't make as much money as you should.
Jon reckons this stuff is fixable and that you can fix it by making some fairly simple changes to the way you do things. He should know, he's been helping people do it for a long time and he's seen the same changes work time after time. He lives in Byron Bay because he likes it and he doesn't surf because he says it's too hard but he likes beer and food very much indeed. He's written for various magazines and newspapers in his time. Mostly because they think he must know something if he's survived this long. His children disagree.
cited from?SMH, Money Magazine?