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

What is the one thing that can make the difference as to whether your building business is successful or not? And this one thing is so influential and so critical. It can determine to the level to which your business is successful.

And you know, when I say successful, that’s even up to you like the, what is success to you? For some it’s money for some it’s meaning for some it’s time freedom and choice. For some it’s all of the above.

But that doesn’t matter because this thing that I’m going to be talking about in this episode of the Builders Business Success podcast can determine the success or not. And the level of success no matter what you believe success is.

So gonna keep you in suspense until we start talking about what it is.

We’re also going to do the standard Q and A.

In this episode the question that has been asked is what if I lose the job on price?

So we’re going to address that because that is a common question. If I’m not price competitive and I lose the work, what then?

And of course, idea of the week. we’re going to have an idea of the week simply so we can get a close up of the light bulb that floats in air. So the most important thing that we get a shot of the floating light bulb.

Now, if you have never been on one of these podcasts what it’s all about is is helping builders overcome, eliminate, get rid of the costly and very common problems that seem to plague most building businesses.

And how we do that is we’ve got a group of builders called Builders Business Black Belt.

And we’re talking about what works, what doesn’t work on a daily basis and testing ideas, testing theories in different areas around the country, different regions.

So we know that some of things that many builders think are limitations aren’t, and it’s just in their mind. And we’ll address that today.

*Transcription of the show*

The theme I was alluding to and making it like it was a big secret and all of that sort of stuff that can make the biggest difference to your success is basically how you think, how you interpret things.

We could call it mindset. We could call it belief, whatever you want to call it. But I want to run through a bunch of them to see which of the common beliefs that are destructive to the success of a building business resonate with you.

And I’m only gonna run through a few because there are many and we’ve got a limited time on the podcast.

So we would just want to run through a few and see how many resonate with you. Why is this important? Why is it important for you to examine your mindset?

Because the reason that most people got into running their own business, not just builders is because they wanted more money than they thought they would get working for somebody else.

They definitely thought they were going to get more freedom and more choice than working for somebody else because I’m the boss. I can decide what happens.

And when I work and who I take on and all of that sort of stuff And with that choice you can have more meaning. You can have, you can work in the areas that you want to work with. So you’ve got more choice and you can do the things you love.

And they are the three motivations for people to for why’s to people started their business. Very, very rarely is this the reality for people when they start their business. More often than not, they become a prisoner to it.

They don’t get anywhere near the time freedom that they, that potentially their team members or other people that are just working for a boss an employee get.

The business owner certainly has a lot more worry. They more often than not have real challenges with cashflow and the financial situation, which creates stress as well.

And often that financial stress leads to decision-making that means that they just take on what they have to take on to keep the wheel turning, the till ticking over that sort of stuff.

So out the door goes, time freedom. Out the door goes financial freedom and out the door goes meaning through you know, being able to choose what your take on. This is the case for most builders. So I want to address a bunch of mindsets and hopefully help you be able to shift them. So you can turn this around.

So these aren’t in any particular order of priority they are just mindsets that I have found are really, really common and are quite challenging for most builders to overcome. And I’m hoping to give you some suggestions on how you might be able to do that. So what’s the first one? The first one is no one cares as much as me.

Now what happens when you’ve got that mindset? When you think that your the buck stops with you and it does, like you are responsible, but that mindset that no one cares as much as me mindset tends to have the business owner have everything run through them. Just check with me before you do that. I’ll take care of that.

And that mindset just tends to cause you to be the bottleneck. And it’s just not true. It’s just not true that no one cares as much as you and no one will do as good a job as you.

That’s just not true. It’s simply not true. If you understand the six human needs Tony Robbins talks about them all of the time that the six human needs are certainty, variety connection, significance, growth, and contribution.

And if you understand how they influence people’s behaviors and choices if you set up an environment where all of those human needs are ticked at a high level you’ll find that you’ll have built a team of people who really, really, want to take on more responsibility.

Who really, really want to contribute more and be part of something that is incredible.

And what means is that you can have people contributing from their space of superpower. So people will take on responsibility and contribute in areas that you just never thought they would because it floats their boat. They really, really care.

So you’ll find that there are people who care a lot more about systems and procedures than you do. There are people that will care a whole lot more about the quality of the customer experience than what you do.

There will be people who care about the detail of the financial measurement and management more than you do given the opportunity but whilst ever you hold onto that belief and you’ve got that stranglehold that no one cares more than me.

You won’t open up the opportunity for other people to show you that they care as much, if not more than you do in various areas of your business. What’s another one? This is a classic. Everyone decides on price. All decisions are made on price. Again, just not true. The big majority of people put value way, way ahead of price.

The majority of people, there is a minority of people who are just really tight and everything is sort of put through their filter of price. But here’s the thing. Most builders build their business as if everybody decides on price.

So think about that. If the majority of people are far more interested in value and the minority of people are interested in price. And you assume that everybody is making decisions based on price.

You set up the focus of your business the communication surrounding your business on price which means you attract the price shoppers the bargain hunters. So that one belief in and of itself creates the reality where everybody you talk to is focused on price because that’s your focus.

The instant that you to change that mindset and go, okay, I want to set up my business So I am attracting and focusing on the same thing as the majority of people, guess what happens? You start then having a focus on value. Your team starts to have conversations on how can we provide more value?

The prospects and the clients are wanting to get more value. And that takes away the focus on price. Price doesn’t matter so much any more when the focus is on value.

And the bottom line with this folks is it all starts with you and in between your ears. And if you hold onto that mindset everyone decides on price. You are attracting that problem into your business and it will never go away. What’s another one?

It’s kind of similar to what I just spoke about but the classic old chestnut, you can’t charge for quotes. Thing is, you can. Thing is Builders Business Black Belt members do.

In fact, our blueprint, so Blueprint to Black Belt that’s our 12 week program where we teach only stuff about mindset and personal effectiveness.

How to implement the quality client pathway. And part of that is getting a fee for your proposal. And then the third pillar is Profit First. How to measure and manage your financial situation to completely eliminate financial stress in the future.

So there are people that go through that Blueprint program even that within the first number of weeks five, six weeks start getting paid for their quotes. It just happens.

And it’s a pointless argument for builders out there. And some still do go, mate, you can’t do that. If, you charge for quotes, you won’t get customers. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. I get that.

If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business but it’s total horse shit that you can’t charge for quotes. The thing is you just don’t know how. You haven’t got the process in place.

And part of that process and the process is useless until, and unless you change that mindset that you can’t do it. You can do it. You just need to open yourself up to it and learn the process.

So you can position yourself, your communications and your processes to your prospects and eventually your clients, that doing it this way and investing in a professionally prepared proposal is a much better way for absolutely everybody involved particularly the client.

So if you hold onto that one again you’re doomed to doing things for free and getting treated like a less than person because you’re holding onto that belief holding onto that thought process. Another one, good help is hard to find. No, it’s not. People love to contribute.

It’s one of the six human needs, contribution, connection being part of a team and contributing to a team and being part of something special is what drives people.

It is the leadership that is the problem and the focus isn’t on creating an environment where people can take on more responsibility and contribute and be part of a team and connect to that team that is doing something that is meaningful and special.

Start to do that and watch how things change. Watch the productivity of the team, go through the roof.

Watch the problems disappear. See how enthusiastic your team members get when they are part of conversations focused on how can we blow our client’s mind this week.

What can we do so they go wow, aren’t we so lucky to have had this builder and this team of trades people managing our product. That is all totally possible, happens every day with our Black Belt members.

But whilst ever that mindset is in your head good help is hard to find, you are going to find evidence that that mindset is the truth, absolutely. Change what you think. And that changes what you start to look for. And you’ll start to find it.

A Facebook user says haven’t done a free quote for two years now. Now that particular Facebook user if you can find that link, the restream the chat dot restream link, click that I think that’s all you need to do. And that will give us permission to find out who you are.

So I can give you a shout out and say that person there hasn’t done a free quote for two years now. And I’ll bet any amount of money that, that user that Facebook user, that anonymous person that I probably know, as soon as they click the link.

They’ll never ever go back to doing free. And it’s, here’s the thing about that is that free isn’t just about the builder being paid for their time. So there’s that respect there from the client.

It’s significantly better for the client when the builder invests their priority their focus their time, their effort on doing a really well put together proposal because they know they’re being remunerated that they’re being respected for it.

I’m assuming that that’s Adrian because Hugh has just said, nice one, Adrian. So Adrian click the bloody link so I know it’s you commenting, all right?

Or else I’m going to send the boys around. Another one. I don’t have time for team meetings. I know that they’re important but we just don’t have time for team meetings. We’re so busy. Dude.

The reason that you’re so busy and busy has nothing to do with effectiveness. The reason that you’re so busy is because you’re not getting the team together and talking about how can we make things more efficient?

How can we make things more effective? And you do that by asking, how can we make things more fun and get rid of the ugly bits out of our day.

If you allow and in fact encourage discussions on a weekly basis on those topics. Let’s put the shitty stuff on the table. There’s nothing that we can’t talk about and come up with solutions for them. You watch what sort of ideas fantastic ideas end up on the table.

If you create that environment, that safe environment where we can talk about the crap, the shitty stuff the boring stuff, the repetitive stuff the stuff that creates angst and you create a safe environment where it’s okay to talk about that stuff without being labeled a winger, you watch what happens.

So, don’t have time for team meetings is a very, very limiting thought process. The reason you don’t have time for them is because you’re not enjoying the benefits of making sure that happens. And then you’ll find that there’s a whole lot more free time.

The team becomes significantly more productive a whole lot of fantastic benefits come from doing that sort of thing. Another one. Gotta make hay while the sun shines. That means you kind of taking on everything. If I ask some builders who’s their ideal client and they’ll go, anyone who’s got money.

Yeah well, ask the builders who have taken on people and then, you know, at some stage through the process regret, having taken them on because they’re always penny pinching and focusing on the cost and can you cut it down. And can you do it faster?

And can you do it cheaper and complaining and winging and bitching about things. Don’t, you don’t need to make hay while the sun shines. You can make your own sunshine with your own processes with the creating a remarkable business.

So all of your past clients start to become attract strategy team members. So they’re out there talking to everybody who will stand still long enough, how amazing you are.

And they will run into people who need your services. And you will tap into the trust factor that they have between them and their friends. And you’ll start to get a lot more fantastic quality clients.

You don’t have to take on everything. And in fact, you shouldn’t you should really make sure you’ve got a quality client pathway that gets the right people to have the right mindset to have a great relationship with you.

And it gets rid of the people who just aren’t appropriate for you well before they steal your time. Another one, and you know, and this is sort of more of the old school builders.

I’m terrible with technology. You know, I’m hopeless with technology. Well, find out how to make it work. Find somebody to make it work for you. Somebody to set it up because there is no getting away from that.

And if you stay with all of the old school processes you end up being a dinosaur, things take too long. It creates frustration for your team for your clients, for your prospects. You’ve just got to wrap your head around it. And all that’s stopping you is that thought process that I’m no good with technology.

If you keep saying that and hypnotize yourself into that belief, you’ll find evidence for it every moment of every day. If you change that belief and you go, I love technology. I like exploring technology. I wanna find people that can help me with my technology. You’ll start to get evidence to back up that belief as well.

And it will make things significantly easier because if you start to fall in love with technology there’s so many things that can happen that you can implement to get things off your list that occur every day or every week.

So you start to get a hell of a lot more time freedom because you can automate things. You can have things happen without any intervention from you.

So we just need to find who can do that for me. And, but you you’ve, you need to open up to the technology. Okay. So I could go on and on and on with these thought processes or with these beliefs this is just seven of them. We’ve talked about just seven of them.

There are an absolutely ton more. What do you come up against? All right? That’s the question that you need to ask yourself. To find the limiting belief that you need to change. Ask the question of yourself. What’s the thing that you keep coming up against?

Q & A

So Q and a time.

The question that I got asked was what if I’m not price competitive and I lose the job based on price.

Question gets asked a lot, but here’s the real question. The real question is what if you got the job? If you so price competitive because here’s the thing that when builders join Builders Business Black belt we pay for them personally to go and have a health check.

A financial health check with a Profit First Professional. And in the years that we’ve been doing it not one builder was charging enough or was making any profit, according to what profit is in Profit First.

So if you’re sitting there and going, you know I need to be price competitive and you’re constantly sharpening your pencil sharpening your pencil. What that says to me is that you are pricing the job where it is impossible to make a profit.

Particularly if you’re trying to be price competitive against other builders who are being price competitive it’s just a bloody race to the bottom. And it all stems from one of the beliefs we talked about just earlier was everyone makes decisions based on price. No they don’t.

And so if you’re losing on price the truth is that you’re losing because you’re not delivering high levels of perceived value from your prospect’s point of view. That’s the truth of the matter. You are not losing the job based on price.

If they’re a quality client if you’re losing the job based on price and they are a price focused person thank God you didn’t get the job because the worst thing you can do is take on a job where you are price competitive and the customer is just totally focused on price.

It’ll be the worst job out you definitely won’t make any profit. You’ll be super frustrated and it just it’s a lose, lose situation.

Nobody wins in that scenario. So the other thing is as well is if you are focused on price, you’re causing your prospects to have a focus on price, okay? They’re going to focus on it too. Even people who, which is the majority 80% of people put value ahead of price.

Even those people, if you focus on price you’re gonna drag their focus down to price as well. So you are doing it to yourself. My suggestion is focus on value. Keep focusing on value. What do I need to do to be able to provide value?

That’s what the whole quality client pathway that we teach in the Blueprint program is focused on giving you the process, the steps, the tools the mindset, and the skills to be able to have a process that is totally focused on value.

That takes the focus away from price. That allows you to get good quality clients who are prepared to pay a premium and allows you to be profitable, which is your right. You’re not ripping people off if you make a profit that’s, you deserve to do that.

But it’s all up to you as to whether you’re prepared to change your mindset, implement a quality client pathway learn the skills, have the processes and the tools in place to have that quality client pathway work. And when you do that, you’ll end up with good quality clients prepared to pay a premium and you will be profitable. And that’s cool.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t ever feel bad about making a profit that’s, businesses don’t survive if they don’t. So it’s part of a successful business. It’s a requirement. So I hope that answers the question. At least stimulating your thoughts.

Idea of the Week

Idea of the week. This gives us the opportunity to show you a closeup of the floating light bulb. It’s very, very exciting, don’t you think? I’m sure you want to get one now. Everyone wants a floating light bulb.

The idea of the week, and this is a bit of a crazy idea but it’s not so crazy. And it’s all about what we’ve it’s in the theme of what we’ve been talking about today. To be able to represent value.

Having, if I’m the prospect having a builder that I really believe has massive authority and stands out in the marketplace within all of the other builders I think is a tremendous advantage.

And there are a couple of ways of doing this. And I know that the big majority of you as soon as mention what the big idea is you go, oh, I wouldn’t do that. Guess what folks, there’s another limiting belief.

That’s the eighth one that we’ve talked about today because both of these things that I’m about to suggest are very simple cost-effective ways of elevating your authority within all of the noise in the building industry. The first one is become a published author.

That’s right. Write a book. Currently within Black Belt we just got a whole bunch of members together and they all wrote a chapter each and they’re creating a book, but it becomes their own book. And it was effortless to put it together.

You know, it only took a little chunk of time for them to write their chapter and what have you. And they will end up with a book and do not discount how powerful a book is in elevating your status as an authority. It’s a very simple process to do it. It doesn’t cost much at all. There are services now that can basically print on demand.

So you don’t have to buy a thousand books like you used to. When we first published our first book. We’re currently in the throes of doing the second one but the first one we had to buy I think a thousand books to make it worthwhile you know, per copy.

You don’t have to do that these days. Everything can be done online with fiverr.com and things like that. You can outsource pretty much the whole thing that the editing and people can make your ramble sound intelligent.

They certainly can make mine so they can do that for you. The second thing is even easier than a book and that’s one of these things not a microphone but a podcast. It is so, so simple to create a podcast. And the ninth limiting belief that you’ll have about this is that I haven’t got anything interesting to say.

Bull shit you have lots of interesting things to say and your prospects will be hanging off every word getting that inside knowledge about the building industry and how things work and how to get a great project and how to get a great outcome and how to select the right builder and how to work with your builder to get the most value and have a great experience and all of that sort of stuff.

People would be hanging out for that sort of stuff and getting the equipment. You don’t need to have all of these moving cameras and all of the stuff that we’ve got.

For just a few hundred bucks, you can create a podcast you know, get good enough equipment to create a podcast and start to promote it and elevate your status as an authority. So that’s the big idea. Write a book, or do a podcast.

Takeaway & Summary

So what’s the takeaway for today?

Here’s the takeaway. It’s not the marketplace that’s the problem. Or it’s not COVID that’s the problem. It’s not the region that you’re in is the problem. It’s not the economy that’s the problem.

It’s not the government that is a problem. It is your beliefs. It is your thought process. It’s the way that you see things. Stephen Covey once said, “the way we see the problem is the problem” and not a truer word has been spoken.

So start to work on those mindsets. If you want help with that, what do you need to do? Book a call. So, as I said, you can just go to the website buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au.

Book a call with us, hit one of the links that’s underneath this podcast. If you’re watching it on Facebook or YouTube and you can book a call we’re more than happy to help out and point you in the right direction. There’s so many resources about.

There’s so many opportunities for you to eliminate all of these problems that we talk about in this show. All you need to do is raise your hand. Like all it is is a conversation. It’s not that scary. You won’t have something sold to you. We’re on a mission to help the building industry to change the building industry.

To elevate the status of builders to the level of respect that I believe they deserve. But it’s up to the builders. It’s up to you to change how you are perceived and to do that you’ve got to change what you think in between your ears and we’re here to help you do that.

So please jump on a call. I hope this this episode has been valuable. I hope it’s been thought pro thought-provoking is the word that I was struggling for.

And I just hoped beyond hope that you will jump on hit the button, jump on a call with us so we can start to point you in the right direction and help you eliminate all of these problems that are completely unnecessary in a building business.

That’s it for this episode, I’m Mick Hawes from Builders Business Black Belt. I hope you enjoyed it.

I hope you got some value out of it. I hope we get to talk to you in person real soon. That is it. Bye for now.