Welcome to episode 94 of the "Builders Business Success Podcast." If this is your first time, welcome. And the purpose of the "Builders Business Success Podcast" is, well, it's basically the construction business podcast.

And I do it because I'd like to be your construction business coach or your builder's coach if you want to have the simple version.

On today's episode, we're gonna unpack a brand new process. And when I say "brand new process," it's not brand-new, it's just brand new to us and brand new to how we implement it in a building business.

But we've been using it in BBB or Builders Business Blackbelt for a while. And essentially, it helps you to make sure you get the essential things done, removes distraction, removes stress, and it ensures that your business is growing and improving.

And in today's show, obviously we'll continue with the idea of the week as well. And in this episode, the idea of the week is a once a week activity that absolutely ramps up productivity.

We've been using that in Blackbelt for a little while as well. But as I say, the content in the "Builders Business Success Podcast" is all about putting things in practice, testing them, making sure they work, and then delivering them in the podcast.

It's just not theory. I know that there's a lot of information out there that is theory. The stuff that we put in this podcast is implemented by builders in regional areas, in city areas all over the country, in all sorts of different geographies and situations, and we make sure that it works.

And we're constantly improving it, and that's what you get in this podcast. So let's get into this week's podcast.

The New Book!

Reminder about the book, 'cause we've got a book, here's the book. Here, it's only just recently been released. It's called "The Successful Builders Tool Kit." It's 29.95 and that includes postage.

Here's a QR code that you can use if you're watching the replay, or if you're watching it live now.

Obviously if you're using your phone, it's gonna be a bit difficult, but you can just get your phone and go bang. And that will take you to the page where you can grab a copy of that book.

And obviously, if you'd like a free copy, I'm gonna tell you how that you'll be able to get a free copy at the end of the podcast.

Transcription of the show!

So the problem I see is, and it turns out in discussions all over the time, we know what we need to be doing, but we just don't do it. And sometimes it's like I just don't know where to start, or I just can't find the time to start because I'm sort of being pushed around by what's going on.

There's a couple of people watching us live which is fantastic. I can see Reagan, I can see Scott, Carson is with us. I'll just click onto chat. So, you guys, if you're with us live and you wanna ask any questions, make any comments or even heckle me, you can do that through the chat.

So, you know, utilize the opportunity by participating in this podcast live. If you wanna ask any questions and we'll be able to answer them in the podcast, so go for your life. And that's why I encourage people to jump into the tool shed and watch the podcast live because you can use it.

If you're smart, you can use it like a little bit of a personal coaching session by asking questions in the chat. But as I said, the problem is we know what we should be doing, but we don't. And it's either because there's just so much stuff, we don't know where to start, or we feel that we can't find the time, and I'm gonna unpack why that is the case in just a little minute.

But what I'm going to introduce to you in this episode is a thing called 4DX, or that's the shortened version of "The 4 Disciplines of Execution." I can't really show you a copy of the book, I can show you the copy of this book, because the copy that I've got is an audible.

So audible.com.au, listen to the book. And one of our members a couple of years ago, bought this to my attention. And I thought it was pretty at the time, and we were doing all sorts of other stuff. And it's like the reason that we didn't use it at the time is all explained in the book, like it's just bizarre.

And at the start of this year, we were talking with some of the Builders Business Blackbelt members about what is one of the things that they're gonna implement into their business that's going to make a big difference this year.

And one of our sort of fairly new members said, "I'm going to introduce for 4DX into my business. And I went, "Whoa, I know what that's all about."

And I gifted him a copy of the book, his name's Cliff, an audible, so he's got a copy of it because I just wanna encourage that sort of stuff to happen in our members' businesses. And it got me thinking, and I went back and revisited the book and I've gone, "Holy crap," you know? This is absolutely amazing.

We've known about it for a couple of years, and we really haven't made a big enough deal about it. To that point, we use it as a basis for how we do things in Builders Business Blackbelt now.

So it's highly recommended, and it's fabulous stuff. And as I said at the start, you know, the problem is we know what we should be doing but we don't do it because there's either too much to do, or I can't find the time to get started and do the things we know we should do.

And in the book, "The 4 Disciplines of Execution," one of the things that they talk about is the whirlwind which is just a fantastic metaphor for what goes on. There is this series of events, or problems or thoughts, or emotions or stuff, just actions and activity that we think that we have to do. And it acts like a whirlwind. It's whirling around, and it's not really clean.

It's very messy, there's stuff all over the place, and it sucks you into it. You know, it sucks you into the vortex. And when you get sucked into the vortex, it's really, really hard to get back out.

And we talk about, you know, well, you should do goal setting and in Blackbelt we encourage a thing called a personal success ritual. And part of the personal success ritual is the prioritized daily action list, and those things help you manage the whirlwind.

But one of the things that I found really valuable revisiting "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" is just the acknowledgement that the whirlwind exists. The acknowledgement that it's there. The acknowledgement that it can suck you in. The acknowledgement that when it sucks you in, it's hard to get out. I think it's a really great thing to just acknowledge its existence.

And instead of just trying to muscle your way out and discipline your way out, using these four disciplines of execution makes it much easier to get out of the whirlwind, even if it's just for a short time each day or each week.

And the more you do that, the less power the whirlwind has over you to the point where it is possible to stay out of the whirlwind, and to really be the master of your own destiny each day and each week.

So I just wanna quickly go through each of "The 4 Disciplines of Execution," but to get into the detail, you know, I really encourage you to grab a copy.

If you like reading, read it. If you like listening night like I do, grab yourself an audible copy of it. So the number one, not in any sort of priority, but the first discipline of execution, it talks about focusing on the wildly important. That's the first discipline of this "4 Disciplines of Execution," and they call it the WIG, the wildly important goal.

What is your WIG? And it's really important to have this wildly important goal for your business, because it becomes the topic of conversation with your team. To that end, we encouraged what I called the weekly WIG sessions.

So previously in "Builders Business Blackbelt," we used to have a daily direction meeting, a meeting, a weekly team meeting and a monthly one-on-one. And we still encourage all three of those things. And they're all for different purposes, but we've modified that weekly team meeting to the weekly WIG session.

And the reason for that is a weekly team meeting, it just tends to focus on, you know, what we need to be doing. And it just tends to be unpacking a list of tasks. And quite often, they can be random.

Whereas if you have a weekly WIG session, and it's called the weekly WIG session, it gives you an opportunity to continuously and constantly talk about what is wildly important.

What is the wildly important goal for your business? And then the activities that we're working on, each team member is tasked to do certain things each week.

They are activities that are directly focused on and connected to this wildly important goal.

And instead of doing all of these random things where we're all over the place and not really having activity that is connected to pushing us towards the wildly important, when you have these weekly WIG sessions, every week we're making sure that we're doing things that are focused on and moving us toward the wildly important.

So focus on wildly important is the first discipline. The second discipline is called Act on the Lead Measures.

So what that's talking about is that there are lead measures and lag measures in relation to measuring any sort of objective, any sort of goal.

And I'd never really thought about it until I read "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" of how we generally think, and what we generally focus on when we're trying to accomplish an objective.

They explain it really well in the book, because they'll use the weight loss goal as the way to demonstrate how this works. And if you've got a weight loss goal, what people generally focus on is their weight or the measurement, you know, it might be they're running a tape around their waist or what have you, but generally it's the scales.

And the scales or what your weight is is what's called a lag measure. A lead measure is an activity that will move the needle on a lag measure so if we are looking at what lead measures are for weight loss, you know, in its basic form, it's the food that you eat. So the amount of food that you eat and the type of food that you eat, and the amount of calories that you burn through exercise.

So the way to lose weight is fairly basic. You reduce what goes in here, and you use more energy by how you move and how much you move. And so, what we tend to do is set objectives to get to a certain weight and you keep measuring your weight, but your weight is a lag measure.

That is the measurement of what happens after you do the lead measure activities, after you change your eating habits and change your exercise habits. And the craziness about this is that we always tend to get sucked into the lag measures.

One reason is because it's easy, like it's easy to jump on the scales and measure your weight. But if you're doing that all of the time, and that's your focus, that's your scoreboard, you'll tend to get disappointed and frustrated.

Whereas if we set objectives each day that focus us on the lead measures, they're the things that what we're eating and how we're exercising.

And we use that as our scoreboard, things change because at the end of the day, we go, "Okay, tick, I ate this type of food and this amount, tick, I did it." "I did this many steps," or "I went for a run" or what have you, "tick, I did it."

And you can feel really good because you did the activity. And then perhaps, once a week, you'll go and look at the lag measure.

Once a week, you'll jump on the scale. And if you go tick, tick, tick every day with the lead measure, you'll feel good. You'll stick to it, and then guess what happens to the lag measure? It starts to shift. You start to reduce the kilos and you feel good about it.

But how we mostly do is we don't measure the lead measures. We don't pay attention to the lead measures so much, we just keep looking at the lag measure, and it doesn't do much for the ego, it doesn't do much for the emotional side of things.

Whereas focusing on lead measures at activities and having that as your scoreboard, that makes the big difference. And by doing that in a building business, it can make profound difference.

So every, every Monday, we have a session where we're focusing on what are the lead measure activities, and how is it directly connected to your wildly important goal.

So we've got the right focus at the start of each week. The third discipline of execution is what I was just talking about this viewable scoreboard, it says, "Keep a record." and you need to have a viewable scoreboard.

The viewable scoreboard is kind of like the dashboard on your motorcar, you know, it's got the speed, and it's got the fuel, and it's got the engine temperature and all that sort of stuff. And that information gives you real time feedback as to what's going on.

So, you know, if your Speedo isn't working, you might be going too fast and you might get a ticket. If your petrol gauge isn't working, you might run outta fuel, you know, it's pretty important stuff. And having the viewable scoreboard in front of you can really affect your decisions.

The classic example of that is the profit first instant assessment. It's just a spreadsheet, and that the idea of it is it changes your decisions because you can see what you're doing basically in real time versus the profit and loss statement which, again, is a lag measure.

It's afterwards, but you can set up objectives and targets for your financial health and wellbeing using the profit first instant assessment. And you can set yourself goals and objectives for every time a check comes in.

Every time there's a progress payment, you can set yourself lead measure activities to move the money into these various accounts. And you can say, "Bang, yes, I've done it." Then watch what happens to the lag measure.

Look what happens to your profit account and look what happens to your ability to pay the best on time and go, the money's always there and you don't have that pressure and all that sort of stuff.

So focusing on those lead measures and using a viewable scoreboard is fantastic. In fact, some of our guys have started to use a viewable scoreboard on site.

So you've got time budgets for certain activities, and it may might be hanging all the doors or putting all the arcs and skirts on, or whatever the bloody, you know, the activities are, but you can have time budgets for them, and you can have the guys actually cross off what percentage of that is done so far. And you can see very, very clearly whether we're in front or behind.

Now, obviously if you're behind, you can see that, you can start to have conversations about it and figure out how to get back in front. But the really amazing thing is, is when you've got this performance viewable scoreboard on site. What we've found is when the guys get ahead, guess what they want?

And don't think for a moment that as soon as they get ahead, they go, "Oh, let's take a break and have a longer lunch" or something like that. They tend to wanna get further in front.

It's very, very motivational, the viewable scoreboard, and there's lots of cool and novel ways that you can do that on a site to make it a lot more fun on site, but it just boosts the productivity like you've never seen. And then the fourth discipline of execution is encourage accountability.

And a simple way of doing that is with the WIG sessions. And everybody has activities that they need to be doing every day or every week, and the weekly WIG session is measuring.

Did I do the lead measures? you know, and then what are the lead measure activities for this week that are going to contribute to moving the needle on the lag measures on the measurements that we need to get to achieve our goal.

And so, doing those weekly WIG sessions are absolutely essential. They tick a lot of boxes as far as getting the team together, getting the team to contribute, getting the team members the opportunity to be recognized, their efforts recognized and appreciated, and being part of a team.

There's all of these six human needs stuff that gets ticked with these weekly WIG sessions that makes it really, really powerful, really, really valuable.

So they are four disciplines of execution. I highly highly encourage you to go grab yourself either a copy of the book or the audio book on audible.com.au and listen to it while you're driving around, it's super powerful stuff.

And, you know, if you want any help with anything, there's this here, which is in the ToolShed, you can click on that says, Get Personal Help, takes you to a form, fill it out, and we'll organize having a chat.

The other way of doing it is just reaching out through the chat, you know, and asking a question through the chat to see how we can help you. But grab yourself a copy and start to look at how you can implement the 4 Disciplines of Execution in your business, because it will make a massive difference to your productivity. It will make a massive difference to how you feel.

It's gonna give you a lot more time freedom. It's going to make your business more profitable. It's gonna make your business more fun and have more meaning. And, in my view, I don't think that there are any three more powerful reasons as to why people started a business.

And they're the three things that very rarely are experienced by business owners. And that is more time freedom, more money freedom, and more meaning, more enjoyment. It's rare, but by implementing the 4DX, you'll get closer and closer and closer to it.

Idea of the Week

The idea of the week is what we do like a truncated version if you like, or you can do it yourself, it's better if you do it with maybe the team or team up with other builders like even now that you're in the tool shed, reach out through the chat or put a post in the Builders ToolShed and say, "Are there any other builders that want to get together on a weekly basis to do this thing?"

And that is every Monday, we have a win the week session with the Builders Business Blackbelt members.

And we all come together and we go, "Okay," because there's a bunch of 'em, we put them in small groups, and you just spend a couple of minutes, 3, 4, 5 minutes each. And what you do is you just say, "This is my priority for the week."

And the priority needs to be something that is either working on your business systems and procedures to make it more effective, or your mindset or skills. So they're the areas that you should prioritize each week.

And if you do that, you know that you are doing something each week that is taking you away from the whirlwind, and the accumulative effect of doing this each week lessens the power of the whirlwind. It doesn't suck you in so easily. It doesn't keep you in and make it so difficult to get out the more you do this.

So you need to have a priority. One: each week that is either working on your business or working on yourself. And if you were to get together with another two or three builders or members of the ToolShed and you explain, "This is what I'm doing, this is my priority this week."

And this is how it's connected to my wildly important goal. That's really important, you need to be able to explain that. The reason you need to be able to explain that is so you know that it is, for sure, connected to your wildly important goal, and that keeps you focused on it.

And then, once you've said this is what your priorities, you have a couple of minutes of the rest of the people in your meeting, giving you ideas, just throwing ideas at you that will make this priority either faster, better, or easier.

 So if you are in this group, your challenge is to give that person ideas through your own experience on how to make their priority, their objective easier, faster, or better. And if you do that at the start of each week, you'll get these great ideas.

You'll be able to implement it. And you'll start to have this cumulative effect of improvement of your business, improve of your mindset, improvement of your skills every week, every week, every week, and break out of this Groundhog Day that most builders experience of the business is exactly the same, one week after the next, after the next.

The only thing that they tend to do is say, "Right, this year, we're going to do that." You know, the old new year's resolution that it just doesn't work because you get sucked into the whirlwind and it doesn't happen.

But if we do this every week, and you've got the accountability of your group every week, and you're constantly setting an objective that makes you better, or your business better, and it's directly connected to a wildly important goal, the focus that that can create is absolutely amazing. So that is the idea of the week. I hope that makes sense.

Wrapping Up

Now, I wanna remind you, while you're in the ToolShed, how to maximize the value from the Builders ToolShed? And it's basically this: post. If you've got a question, if you've got a win, if you've got a lesson, I want you to post.

So jump into the Builders ToolShed and post, endeavor to do a post at once a week at very minimum. I'd love people to be posting every day, ask questions. What are your questions? Surely you've got questions on how to improve your business.

When other people ask questions, jump in and help answer, be part of the peloton and contribute to helping other people, other team members in the Builders ToolShed. Share your wins to help people get inspired and give people hope that this stuff works, and also share your lessons.

And so everybody in the ToolShed should be either growing or learning. So you're either implementing and winning, I want you to share those, and I want you to share your lessons as well.

So you've tried something and it didn't work, or a mistake you made. And here's the lesson I learned from it, because if you can start to contribute those lessons, it makes everybody else's progress significantly faster.

Also, if you've got suggestions for the Builders ToolShed, there's a suggestion box. You can just go into the search bar at the top and go Suggestion Box, and it'll pop up and you can pop your suggestions in there.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we'll do it, but if it makes sense and it's gonna help everybody, absolutely we will do it. And the last thing is, I want you to help us help you. So if you're watching this live, I'd like you to put the word, "chat" in the comments if you wanna get on a conversation.

We wanna get you into a telephone conversation so we can find out where you're at, where you wanna go, what's in the way so we can figure out what tools, what resources, what things we can put into the Builders ToolShed to make everybody's lives easier.

So if you're watching it live, or if you're watching the replay, put it in the comment section and we'll organize to have a chat and find out what might help you with your journey to get where you wanna go.

Now, at the start of the podcast, I said, you know, buy the book, this book here, but if you wanna free copy of this book, all you need to do is do what I just said is organize a conversation, a telephone conversation.

When you've had that telephone conversation, we'll post you out at our cost, a copy of that book because we really, really appreciate your help. The more live information, the more real time information we keep getting from you guys out there in the Builders ToolShed, the better the ToolShed is going to become, and we wanna reward you for helping us so we'll send you out a copy of that book.

And that book has got everything in it from start to finish. Everything that I talk about in these podcasts is in that book. All of the meetings that we talked about, everything. And so it's a really, really valuable tool to have in your office to read and keep your mind in the right place.

So that is it for this episode of the "Builders Business Success Podcast." I hope it was valuable.

I hope it got you thinking about what you might be able to do in relation to 4DX, getting together with other builders and creating that accountability with the Monday setup, you know, with the idea of the week, and it will keep you focused and definitely make you far, far more productive.

So that is it for this episode, we'll be back next week, 10:00 AM, Sydney time for the people who wanna jump on live in the ToolShed. I'm Mick Hawes from Builders Business Blackbelt, That is that for this episode. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.