Hey folks and welcome to another episode of Builders Business Success Podcast!

If this is the first time you’ve ever watched this podcast, listened to this podcast, it’s really focused on looking at the common and costly problems that show up running a building business. And we come up with solutions to those problems. We put them out in the real world in all sorts of different scenarios and test the solutions to those common problems.

So we’re not just giving you a theory or what we think, this is stuff that’s actually been applied. It absolutely works. And the whole idea is, is to get rid of the ugly bits out of the building business. In my world, any business, you know, not just a building business, but your business is a platform to deliver you a lifestyle. And I find that too many builders get sucked into their business.

They start it for a purpose, and that is to potentially earn more money, to have more free time, more choice. Basically be master of their own destiny and exactly the opposite happens. And so what we, what I believe the building business or your business is meant to do for you is to deliver you more choice, more time freedom, more financial freedom, and also more meaning, like working on things that you really love doing, things that you really love.

I know that we talk a lot in Builders Business Blackbelt with our members about things like The Infinite Game philosophy by Simon Sinek. If you haven’t read that book or listen to it on audible, I highly, highly recommend that you do because he talks about a thing called a just cause, and it’s really important to find out what your just cause is because it’s something that really ticks that box of meaning or purpose.

And there are some fortunate people, me being one of them, who they’re just cause their business aligns perfectly with their just cause. And, mine is, I am absolutely committed to changing the building industry. The building industry norms, the practices because many of them create complete and utter unnecessary pain for you, the owner of the building business, for your team, for your clients. And most of that stuff can be eliminated by just changing the practices.

And in my world, if we can change those practices, make you more profitable, have you have more choice, more time to do the things that you really wanna do and have more meaning. So either your business contributes to your cause that you’re really passionate about, or your business gives you the freedom and the financial wherewithal to contribute to your cause.

That to me is the purpose of the business. And if we can change how we do the business, how you do your business, you’ll end up with more time, more money and more meaning. And like examples of that, and I just had a message from one of our Builders Business Blackbelt members over in Western Australia.

And they’ve had this dream in relation to their just cause and it is to have a business that can recruit other trades people, other suppliers, as well as the people, the team on their business to find people less fortunate and going and help them with an extension or a renovation, or just fix things up.

So their house works for them. And that has basically just kind of came to fruition over the last couple of days. He’s been speaking to some people and they’re really excited about the project and their found a lady who’s sort of really having a hard time and that’s gonna be their first case. And it’s really, really exciting stuff. So what might that be for you? Now this isn’t the focus of the content in today’s session.

Today’s session is all about the upcoming scenario, that you’re either in already or about to be very, very soon. And that is the silly season where everybody needs everything done by Christmas.

For whatever reason, this mentality descends upon us. And everybody thinks that they need to move in, have it completed, have it all done by Christmas. I’m not sure why, but that’s what people do and everyone gets sucked into it. And so in this episode, I want to share with you a philosophy, a process, if you like, that I created some years ago, some years ago, and it’s called the no holiday hangover. We’re talking about it in Builders Business Blackbelt right now, because it’s almost too late, but not quite to start to prepare for this. And so that’s what we’re gonna be covering in this episode.

We won’t be doing the Q and A, we won’t be doing the idea of the week, but we will give you a shot of the floating light bulb. ‘Cause it’s pretty amazing. I still just love looking at it, but we’re not gonna do the idea of the week. It’s just basically going to be this no holiday hangover.

*Transcription of the show”

And so what is this no holiday hangover? Well traditionally, and if I go to my whiteboard there, traditionally, there are these three sections.

And if you can see this, the lead up, so if I can get my writing thing to work, we’ve got the lead up and that’s the lead up to Christmas, but this is just as appropriate for Easter or long weekends or school holidays, or any time that you take time off. If you have some sort of annual holiday in the middle of the year or whatever, there is a lead up to a holiday, but I’m just using this now because this affects everybody.

So you might have holidays in the middle of the year or different times, or what school, holidays, whatever, and different businesses, you know, will have holidays at different times, but pretty much this one affects everybody.

I just thought I’d use this as an example. So there’s the lead up to the break. And then there’s the break in this case, it’s going to be the Christmas holidays and then there is back to work. Okay?

And if you’re listening to this on the audio only, the reason that there’s big gaps in my speaking is I can’t seem speak and write at the same time and I’m doing a visual demonstration of this. So if you are just listening to it, it might be worthwhile jumping on Buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au.

Go to the blog page and watch this episode. So you can get the gist of this. But what generally happens is in the lead up, what happens to your stress levels? And I’ve got the legend at the top here.

And, you know, in my experience, in the lead up, the stress levels kind of start to go up like that. Like almost like the exponential curve, your stress levels, because everyone’s ringing. Everybody wants everything by Christmas. And so stress levels tend to go up.

The thing that I need you to understand, even though that I believe that you believe that you work really hard and you’re really efficient because you’re working hard, coming up to a break in this case, Christmas, productivity, which is this purple line here, productivity, as stress goes up, productivity and effectiveness actually goes down. So what we need to do is eliminate stress. And so in the lead up to the break, what generally happens is stress goes up.

Believe it or not productivity does come down. I know you might not think it does, but it does because being in a stressful state, is absolutely not conducive for productivity. It’s not conducive for making good decisions. So the secret to productivity is getting rid of that stress. I’ve been teaching time management for over three decades.

And the one thing that I believe, and I know about time management and effectiveness is it is totally an emotional game. It’s totally a mental and emotional game. It’s not about systems and processes and prioritizing and all of that sort of thing. It is about managing your emotions.

And if you can get those things under control, you make better decisions, your actions and your behaviors cause you to be significantly more effective. And when you’re more effective, you are more productive.

So when you’ve got high stress, whether you like it or not, you’ve got low productivity. Now, the next thing that happens is we have the break in this case, it is Christmas. And if we’ve got high stress, when we come into the Christmas period, just trying to find my green marker here, you’re meant to be relaxed, right?

But relaxation, when you are very highly stressed, as soon as you come into the break, you can’t relax. Your brain’s going a million miles an hour. And you’re thinking about this, and maybe we should have done that. And I wonder if this is okay and what’s gonna happen. And so when you’re on your break, it takes awhile for you.

What’s going on with my thing here, it’s creating a straight line. I don’t want a straight line. I wanna a line like that. So what happens is that you’re not relaxed at all at the start of your holiday, but then as a few days go past and a few weeks, you know, if you’re lucky enough to go past, you get into a bit of a rhythm and you start to relax a little more. Okay?

But then the next step is we’ve got to go back to work. So after two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever you choose to have off at that time, we’ve got to go back to work and where we’re nice and relaxed, but for going back, which is the yellow marker here is low because we just got into the groove of things.

We just got into the holiday and we go, ah, yeah. And then we’ve gotta go back next week. Oh we gotta go back next week. And then bang, you got to go back. And so enthusiasm for work is low and it takes a while for that to come back up again. And if the enthusiasm is low, guess what else is low? Productivity is low.

So we’ve got productivity here as well. And that kind of follows the enthusiasm. And so everything, each part of this process, the lead up, the break, and the back to work. They’re not working properly. You’re unproductive when you need to be productive. You’re not relaxed when you’re meant to be relaxed because in that break area, you’re meant to be relaxing, rejuvenating, and getting ready to hit the ground running.

But as you can see, none of that happens. So what I want for you is to be super productive in the lead up and really having a sense of control. Having your break, so you can instantly relax, really enjoy the break, but use that break in a way that builds up the enthusiasm and the excitement.

And I’ll guarantee you, if you do this properly, let’s say you’ve decided to have three weeks off. If you do this properly at the end of week two, you’ll be chomping at the bit to get back to work early because your excitement and enthusiasm levels will be that high.

You instead of going, oh crap, I’ve got to go back to work, you’ll be going, I can’t wait to get back and start to implement some of these ideas and so forth. And so you’ll then come back. Your enthusiasm levels will be high. Guess what happens to your productivity?

That’s going to be high as well. So how do we do this? Well, the first thing that we need to do is make sure in this lead up, we have a really good handle on our ability to apply priorities to all of the requests that we’ve got. Okay? That’s the first thing. In Builders Business Blackbelt and in Blueprint, we teach our builders how to do a prioritized daily action list.

And it’s part of a thing called a personal success ritual. So it’s a small ritual that we teach our members to do every single day, seven days a week. And it prepares your mind and your emotions for the day. And you might think, oh, that sounds like a bit of a wank. Well, you can think what you like, but you speak to anybody.

In fact, speak to everybody who has implemented this personal success ritual, which includes the prioritized daily action list and to a person they will say, whenever I do it, I have a fantastic day, an incredibly enjoyable, productive day. And whenever I don’t do it, it mostly turns to crap.

Which makes you wonder why we don’t do it all of the time, but that’s a conversation for another podcast as to why we don’t do the things that we know are good for us and why we don’t continue on with the things that we’ve proven to work. So that’s the first thing we need to do.

We need to get in charge of what’s happening. And the worst thing that you can do in the next two and a half months is get up and just go to work and work hard because you’ve got that many things you need to do, and that many plates in the air and that many commitments you need to stick to.

The secret to it is get up early and just get your head down and your bum up and start this stuff. That is the worst decision that’s craziness, because that is what produces the stress going up and the productivity going down in this lead up to a break, in this case Christmas.

So we’ve got to get a handle on that. And the handle is with a personal success ritual and a prioritized daily action list. And there is a choreography to all of this. You can make up your own, sure, But we’ve already made one for you.

And it’s a four step personal success ritual. The fourth step is the prioritized daily action list, which has five steps. And you only need to learn these simple steps. And these are the things that we consistently get feedback about that since I’ve been doing this prioritize daily action list included in my PSR, my personal success ritual, I’m getting what I used to get done in a day by 11 o’clock.

So that they’re cutting their working day in half. If that is something that you want to learn, I’m gonna show you how to do that. But that is exactly what you need to be doing in this lead up to Christmas.

You need to be getting a handle on your decision-making to make sure that you do the highest of all priorities every day. And what you will find is there’ll be a lot more happier clients. There’ll be a lot more happier team members. There’ll be, you’ll be a lot less stressed. Your clients will be a lot less stressed.

Your team will be a lot less stressed because you have implemented this PSR including the prioritize daily action list in the lead up to the break. So that’s how we get rid of that there. So what will happen is that your productivity, so if I get rid of all of this here with my eraser, get rid of that. Oh no, I got rid of my one of my lines, bring that back, get rid of that relaxation one. Dammit.

You can tell this is live and not rehearsed. So this is what I believe will happen if you implement this. That your stress levels, so if we go for the red again, the stress levels will start to come down. Okay? By using this approach, your productivity, that’s purple dunno why I selected that, your productivity is going to go up. Okay? You’re gonna get more done.

Now, when we go into the break, traditionally relaxation low, and it starts to relax the further you get into the break. What I want you to do in this case, or what will happen for you in this case is if you’ve done that you will be able to relax from day one. Okay?

But some messages happening because my iPad’s online. I can get rid of that. Oh, no, I can’t. If I do that, I can go airplane mode, get rid of that. Get rid of that. And I won’t get bugged by messages. So your relaxation will be high right from day one.

And you’ll be able to maintain that relaxation throughout the break. Oh, I know what’s happened. I’ve got to turn that back on. Otherwise my pen won’t work. Let me see. I’ve got to reconnect my pen. It’s all happening. Oh, you’re joking me. Okay.

I’ll take all of that back off again. I’m just gonna have to put up with a message from Tobias, whoever Tobias is. Here we go, my Apple pencil is working again. So your relaxation is going to stay high. Maybe relax a little bit more. But throughout the break, what I suggest you do is you maintain your personal success ritual.

So what most people do, the mistake that they make is because they’re exhausted and they just don’t wanna do anything. And they’re stressed out. The last thing they wanna do is think about work and do all of that sort of stuff. They just wanna completely disconnect and flake off and do nothing while they’re on their holiday.

So I hear that all of the time. I don’t wanna know anything about it. I just, I wanna do nothing. Worst decision, don’t do that. You’ve got to remain connected, but just for, you know, 15, 20 minutes a day, get quiet and go through your PSR, your personal success ritual.

And by doing that, the reason that I suggest you do this with massive enthusiasm and I mean, massive enthusiasm is my suggestion. I don’t, you don’t need to do your PSR with massive enthusiasm, but do it because you are out of your routine, there is an enormous opportunity in this break time, because you’re out of your rhythm. You’re out of your normal environment.

Let’s say you go away with a family caravaning or camping or whatever you do, instead of just completely disconnecting when you get up, when you’re away camping, go and sit by the campfire early in the morning and do your personal success ritual and do a bit of like, part of your personal success ritual is goal setting and a thing called the dream catcher. And if you do that, you will be in a different environment out of that pressure cooker. And it’s a great time.

It’s a great opportunity to change habits, particularly habits of thought. And if you just do that for 20 minutes a day, when you’re on holidays, and I suggest to our Blackbelt members, this is every day, it’s Christmas day, it’s New Year’s day.

Guess, you know, how easy that’s gonna be after New Year’s Eve, you know, so New Year’s day, you might be a bit foggy. Do it anyway, please. And if you do that, your enthusiasm levels throughout your break about going back to work, will start to do this. You will have massive enthusiasm.

You’ll build massive enthusiasm as you’re coming to the end of your break. You’re relaxed, but you’re focused on little changes that you can make to your business that are gonna make a massive difference next year. And you start to get excited about that. And that happens because you’re on a break.

You’re not gonna work every day and having that pattern interrupt with your thought processes. And what that means is that you’ll come back with that high level of enthusiasm when you come back to work. But guess what happens to that productivity? Because you’re enthusiastic, your productivity will be high, but there’s one more thing that you need to do.

And that is during your break, when you’re doing your personal success ritual, what I want you to do is design your prioritize daily action list. So that’s the list that you build for yourself every day. I want you to design the actions for your prioritized daily action list for the first seven days. Okay?

For the first seven days, we’ve got one, two, three, four, five, sorry, not seven, five. For the first five days. Okay? I want you to design your prioritized daily action list for the first five days in the break here.

So in this time here, after you’ve done some goal setting and what have you in with your PSR in this time, you start to design, what are the actions that I need to take in the first five days? And what that does is allows you to hit the ground running.

You don’t have to think about things because when you come back, there’ll be people asking you to do this. And people pulling you in seven different directions at once. You’ve got to remain focused and committed to the activities that are going to change your business and not get sucked back into the business again.

And if you do that, your productivity will be high. When you come back first day and it will increase. Now that graph or these graphs look significantly better than the graph I talked about at the start of the show.

So instead of being all stressed out and low productivity in the lead up to the break, you’re going to be a lot less stressed and a lot more productive, which will give you a sense of accomplishment. You will go into your break feeling really good, feeling like you are in control, which allows you to relax immediately. You jump into your PSR and your planning.

You maintain that as you’ve done through the lead up to the break, you maintain that through the break, but you use the goal setting part of your PSR to design improvements to your business. What this does is improves your enthusiasm. You’re relaxed, but you’re also enthusiastic and excited, ready to go back.

You use part of that time to plan the first five days, you will hit the ground running. You will be productive. You will be enthusiastic. And so instead of being stressed out, then not really relaxing and rejuvenating in your break and being disappointed and frustrated when you’ve got to go back to work, it’ll be the opposite of that. You’ll be more productive.

You’ll have a better break. You rejuvenate, be more enthusiastic, hit the ground running with enthusiasm and high levels of productivity when you go back to work. It’s the exact opposite of what happens to pretty much everybody, every time that they go on a holiday.

So I hope this makes sense to you. If you’ve got any questions, I’d love for you just to jump in the comment section and ask questions. But the real thing is that if I go back to my slides, take that off now. What I’d love you to do is jump on a call with us, ASAP.

Like as soon as you hear this, I’d love for you to jump on a call with us because I have a process ready for you to be able to learn in great detail, the choreography for the personal success ritual and the prioritize or the prioritized daily action list. I’ve got it all ready for you to learn, and it will be very, very quick. You learn it very quickly and you’ll be able to implement it on this run in to Christmas.

You will also have access to things that you can start to unpack in the goal setting session in your personal success ritual while you’re on holidays, about how to build a better client pathway or turning your prospects into better quality clients, as well as learning how to never ever, ever have financial stress in your business ever again.

So they’re the sorts of things. You’ll be able to unpack and learn when you’re on holidays and be ready to put them in place. So they’re ready to go on day one when you go back to work after the holiday.

So what a great way to spend the next three months being involved in improving your productivity, reducing stress, not letting the silly season, get you all stressed out, being able to be relaxed and build that enthusiasm while you’re understanding what you can do when you go back to work.

And then when you go back, you hit the ground running. All of that is sitting here waiting for you. And so you can be one of two people right now. You can go, yep, that all sounds good, but I am so busy that there’s no way I’d be able to concentrate on what you’re talking about.

Poor decision. That means what you’ve been doing in the past is gonna continue and gonna continue. People who interrupt that pattern of busy-ness and implement what we’re talking about, are the people who get the most out of it. And I could line you up with, I don’t know how many people that would tell you exactly that.

This what I’m suggesting to you is completely counter-intuitive, but it’s the best investment of time and money that you could do for your business in the next year is invest some, a small amount of time and a small amount of money in learning how to do these things in the lead up to Christmas. Do not wait. Do it now.

Takeaway & Jump On A Call

If you’re watching this on the blog, there’s a button underneath, you just hit the button. You can book a call. If you’re listening to this navigate to buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au.

That says, schedule a call on the page, schedule a call. If it’s not right for you, it’s not right for you, but I encourage you to book the call, to have the conversation, to see whether this will work for you. And I think that basically it’s up to you.

We know that this information, this process, this choreography, when it is implemented, works every single time and people are blown away by the results. They can’t believe it. So it’s up to you.

It’s up to you to make the call. And then it’s up to you to implement these ideas, but I can guarantee you, it’s not a big time impose for you to learn this stuff. It’s it’s really quite rapid. It’s convenient and it works. So all you need to do is jump on a call, go to buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au, schedule that call, let’s chat.

Let’s get you onto this choreography under this process. So you can make this lead up to Christmas, your next holiday and the start to 2022, the best ever. So I hope this has stimulated your thought. I hope this has got you thinking.

I really hope that you’re gonna take the plunge and do this. I know it’s counterintuitive, as I said, and you might be thinking, but I’m so busy. We can fix that super fast and you won’t feel busy anymore. And you’ll know for sure and certain that this is the best decision that you’ve made in a long, long time.

So I look forward to talking to you in person real soon. Hope you enjoyed this episode of Builders Business Success podcast. Just remember the name of the show. And I hope we’re talking to you in person real soon. That is it. I’m Mick Hawes, Builders Business Blackbelt. Bye for now.