The podcast is coming to you from isolation. Julie got the positive test a number of days ago so we're in isolation, which is a whole bunch of fun.

If this is your first time watching the Builders Business Success podcast, it's the Construction Business podcast or the Builders podcast and I genuinely wanna be your construction business coach or your builders coach and help you overcome any and every issue that is very common and costly in the building industry.

And in this episode, this episode 95, what we're going to do is cover, unpack what super successful people have in common and what's different compared to the majority. And the good news is is you can have that super success if you want it. It's not beyond your reach.

We just need to understand these principles and of course, in idea of the week, I've got something that I wanna share with you that can change absolutely everything in your business for the better.

The New Book!

Now before we kick off, just want to remind you of the Successful Builders Toolkit, the book. So only recently been released.

It's got absolutely everything in it from soup to nuts, from end to end in relation to what we talk about, what we unpack, what we coach in the Builders Business Blackbelt program.

So it's got absolutely everything in it. If you want to get a copy, there's a QR code on the screen.

You can just hit that, take a photo or whatever you do with your phone and away you go. It'll take you to the page where you can get a copy of that.

Of course, if you want a copy, a free copy of that, I'm gonna share with you how you can get a free copy of that a little later in the podcast.

Transcription of the show!

So the topic of today is why do some people seem to be effortlessly more successful while most people consistently struggle?

And I suppose I need to give you a warning, it's not a disclaimer, it's just a warning that if you're closed minded, if you don't like taking personal responsibility, I suggest you pull the pin on this podcast straight away because you are going to be squarely and solely in the cross hairs in relation to this discussion, because there are so many people, and it's not just builders, business owners in general, who are constantly complaining and blaming things outside of themselves for not getting what they want.

If they've got cash flow issues, the way that they talk about a cash flow issue or the way that they process it in their mind is it's this thing outside of themselves.

If you listen to Mike Alcalowitz, he's in the introduction and he talks about if you think that you need more turnover to earn more profit, he calls people like that liars and wants to reach over and bitch slap them to get them to wake up and go hey, it's not a cash flow problem, it's a cash management problem, and it's all about the decisions that you make.

And this goes all the way through to whether your marketing's successful, whether you've got a great team, whether you are profitable, whether you are efficient, whether you've got enough time to do the things that you wanna do, whether you've got great clients or awful clients, it all comes back to you.

And so if you don't like this message, please jump off the podcast, press the stop button if you're watching the replay, because you're not gonna like it and it may rub you up the wrong way.

But if you are genuine about changing your business and about changing your lot in life, this is gonna be a very, very valuable message and a valuable episode for you.

Now, this is something that we talk about consistently. Anthony is in Melbourne where it's really cold. I've watched the weather this morning, it's really cold.

So make sure you rug up. We talk about this a lot, but being in isolation, I tended to watch a little bit more television, just lying back, watching a bit of television and I decided to watch this show, can't even remember the name of it, but it was basically a documentary on two people, Michael Johnson, the sprinter, Olympic champion, world champion and Jimmy Spithill and I really watched it because I love sailing.

Like I'm a mad, crazy yacht racing person. And obviously I know who Jimmy Spithill is and wanted to watch this show just to learn from him because he's absolutely amazing.

He's an Australian and he's won the America's Cup a couple of times, never for Australia. He always seems to be sailing in other countries, but they won the America's Cup over New Zealand a couple of years ago and came back from an eight...

Was it, an eight, zero deficit and that particular cycle of the America's Cup, it was the first boat to win nine races. And New Zealand were up eight, zero, and Jimmy Spithill sailing the American boat came back from an eight, zero deficit to win the America's Cup.

And it was just amazing listening to both Michael Johnson and Jimmy Spithill just about their thought process and their beliefs and how they decide things, how they make decisions and their priorities.

And one of the most important things that we need to get from what these guys are saying is talent isn't enough and talent won't get you there.

Jimmy Spithill would say, I will take hard work, and we're gonna unpack what hard work is in a little minute, hard work over talent any day.

And I've experienced this myself many, many moons ago. I was working with Tennis Australia and Tennis Australia were flying me around all over the country, I eventually was on tour and worked with people like Samantha Stosur and went around on the women's tour and so forth. She won the US Open, and I was basically a mindset coach.

I was working with all of the coaches, the national coaches, the state coaches, all of the different state squads, if you like, and then started to work with professional players as well.

And in that, I was working with the parents as well, which is a whole nother story. But the one thing that I noticed for the couple of years that I was doing this is because I was working with the juniors, you'd see young, talented kids. And they were just so gifted.

They could just play like you wouldn't believe. And of course at that junior level, they would win. They would win most of the time. But then there were the workers, one of them that springs to mind, and he's still playing, his name's Johnny Millman.

He is the nicest guy you would ever meet and I remember working with Johnny when, like, I dunno how tall he was, but he was very, very short.

And I was so inspired and so impressed by Johnny Millman because he was this little kid. He wasn't gifted, like with the talents that some of these other kids were.

And he just worked like a Trojan. He was amazing, he would get up at four, 4:30 in the morning and he would go and wake his dad up and say dad, it's time to start, it's time to start hitting and what have you.

And whenever I was doing any sessions with the squad, there were the talented guys that would kind of sit at the back can go, oh yeah.

They basically thought what I was talking about was a bunch of bullshit. But kids like Johnny Millman were up the front and they were just writing like crazy and asking questions and just incredible.

And the really super talented kids, and these were really gifted kids to the point where the Australian Institute of Sport would give them all of the financial support and pay all their bills and all that sort of stuff.

So they were able to gain more resources than these kids that are working hard and I'm here to tell you today that Johnny Millman, you might not have heard of him, but he is still playing, he is still going. He is still a successful Australian tennis player.

And the kids that were sitting up the back that just relied on their talent, you don't even know who they are. They've never become a professional tennis player, because as soon as it got to the point where you had to work hard and talent wasn't enough, they hadn't developed the habits of working hard.

They would rely on their talents and then when the rubber met the road, and that happens with everybody, you'll get to a point where talent just isn't enough anymore. And if you haven't developed that work ethic, you're in trouble.

Now let's unpack this working hard bit, because one of the reasons that I chose the niche that I chose to work with builders is my dad was a builder, I was an electrician. I was in the building industry a lot growing up. And I just felt that these people were fantastic people and they worked really hard.

That's what attracted this industry, why I was attracted to this industry. But since I have been in the performance area and worked with lots of builders, what I've noticed is we need to understand what working hard actually is and I know that there'd be plenty of builders going well, I do work hard.

I put massive hours in, and I know that, and that's what pains me, because you are often, more often than not working hard in the wrong places. You're giving priority to the wrong things and you are not getting the reward for your efforts.

And that's why I wanted to unpack this today because it's such a subtle thing that can make a massive difference. It's not about how many hours that you put in, particularly in the couple of areas of working in the business ones on site.

So you're on the tools, or you're managing your people on site, or you're in the office and you're managing all of the administration and talking with clients and all that sort of stuff. That's working in the business.

What you need to give priority to is working on yourself, working on yourself, and then on your business. Jim Rowen, who was an amazing, amazing, inspirational man, who is no longer with us, always used to say work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

Going back to the Tennis Australia thing, I would quite often ask the group that I was working with because there'd be coaches, there'd be kids, and there'd be their parents.

There I would ask them what is the thing that makes the biggest difference in competition at the elite level, is it your physical and tactical ability, or is it your mental and emotional management?

So your mindset and your emotional management and to a person, everyone would always agree that it is you. It is how you manage your mindset and your emotions in the heat of competition that makes the big difference.

And I would say well, let's break it down. Like, is it an 80/20 thing? Is it a 50/50? Well, that's not the biggest, is it, is it 70/30, 80/20, 90/10, what is it? The worst I ever got was 60/40, like 60 emotional, 40 physical.

I remember many years ago working with a bunch of different Cricket sites and I was working with Cricket Tasmania, I worked with Cricket Victoria, and I was chatting with Booney, so David Boone about this topic and he said, like at the state level, he believed the difference was 80/20, so 20% physical, 80% mental, but he said, once you get to test level, that level, that international level of cricket, he would say, it's a 5/95.

There is so little difference between the skills and abilities of players at that level. It all comes down to your mental and emotional management.

But when I would ask the parents and the coaches and the kids, let's say it's an 80/20 thing, it's 80 emotional, 20% physical. How much time do you spend on the physical?

And people would say and there'd be people like Johnny Millman, who was just an absolute go-getter. I never seen a harder working kid. And they would be putting hours and hours and hours every day into their physical fitness and their skills with hitting and ball placement and all of this sort of stuff.

And so I would say, well, if you're putting that many hours into the physical side of it, and it's an 80/20 deal, doesn't that mean that you would be putting four times that amount into the mental and emotional management side of things and then no one would give me eye contact after that, they always looked down because they kind of had just figured out what they needed to do. You need to put the majority of your efforts. Let me rephrase that.

It's not the majority. I was using those figures to get a point across, but what I'm really talking about is giving priority to the things that will make the biggest difference. The biggest difference to what you may say.

So the secret here is knowing your purpose. Like, do you know specifically with specificity what you want from your business? What financial rewards, put a dollar figure on it do you want from your business? What time freedom put a figure on it do you want from your business?

We've got Matt who's watching us. He just said, yo in the chat, and I know Matt has put an objective for himself, cause he was kind of working just with himself over the years and managing subbies. But the penny dropped for him not that long ago and he started to get very, very focused on what he wanted.

And one of the things that he decided he wanted was by October, he wanted to be only working on site four days a week and he wanted a full day a week in the office and he tried to do this before and was quite unsuccessful.

But he started to focus on it and started to identify what needed to be done to make this happen. And theN he gave those actions and those decisions priority.

So it's not about going back to my tennis players, if you put two hours into physical, then you've gotta put eight hours into the mental. It's not about doing more, it's about giving priority and the way that we see priority in Builders Business Blackbelt is not just telling yourself that this is more important than anything else because that's what most people think when they talk about priority.

They go, well, yeah, I know that's the priority, it's the most important thing. But when you look at their behavior, they're not acting as if it's the most important thing because they do everything else first.

They'll get on site and they'll speak to the customer and they'll speak to the team and do all of those sorts of things and go and pick up suppliers that have been left behind or whatever, because there's an emergency on site. They give priority to that.

To me and this has simplified it for me. If you watch a surfing competition, the surfer who has priority means that they get to go first. And that's all I mean by priority is give this activity.

If you really believe it is the thing that is going to move the needle on your goal and move you closer to where you want to get, you've gotta give it priority, meaning that you do it first before you do all of the other stuff.

It was really interesting on listening to this docu or watching this docu where Michael Johnson would say with his discipline, his training, he would train six days a week and he would train Monday to Saturday and he would have Sundays off to recuperate and to recover.

And he said on those years, where Christmas day fell on a Tuesday, he would give priority to the training. A lot of people around him thought that's a bit much.

What about your family and so on and so forth. He gave the activity that was going to take him where he wanted to go, which was to win gold in both the 200 and 100 in the Olympics and the world record in both of those races.

And over the years, he did that. And he said if Christmas day falls on a Tuesday, it's just a Tuesday to me, it's a training day. That's the priority he gave it. And you might say, well, that's a bit much and that's okay too.

The only thing that I wanna get across in this episode of the podcast is all of these decisions as to whether you do the things that are gonna take you to where you want to go or not is completely up to you. It's not an economic thing. It's not a time thing. It's not a talent thing. It's not a resource thing, it's a you thing.

It's completely and totally up to you. And the sooner that you stop blaming everything else outside of you, and you go it's up to me. If it's to me, it's up to me, and then you find out what those activities are that will take you to where you want to go and not everyone has to be a gazillionaire or anything like that.

You just decide what you want and then figure out what the steps are to get there, figure out what support you need, figure out what resources you need, and then start looking for them and asking for them.

But you've gotta give it priority. Really great guitar players, they didn't become amazing guitar players by going out and smoking dope and getting on the booze and all of that. They stayed in their room and they practiced. You might not want to get to that level, but there hasn't been any builders that I've ever spoken to that have the business that they want. And that just might be I want to be able to have weekends off. I want to be able to have two holidays a year, or I wanna be able to take time off when it's school holidays and I wanna have all of the finances taken care of as far as I'm never ever late for bills and I wanna earn this much and it might not be a whole lot, but I want to earn this much for myself and my family.

All I'm saying is get specific with those things, put figures on them, then take responsibility for making it happen and we are here to help. So what I'm suggesting to you is figure out what your purpose is. What is that as far as time is concerned, money is concerned and meaning is concerned.

And the meaning is what sort of things do you love doing and who are the type of people that you love working with and paint that picture, get all of the detail and then start figuring out what you need to do to work towards that.

One last thing that that our coach, my coach Taki, said a number of years ago, and it's kind of become a saying, and it came from the story of an Olympic rowing team, I believe it was the British Olympic rowing team.

And they just decided prior to starting their Olympic campaign for an Olympic year, that they were all gonna come together and decide what they needed to do to give the best performance they could. And they came up with this saying, will it make the boat go faster?

So they knew that if the boat would go faster and go as fast as it could, they would do the best they could. And if that was gold, great. If it was silver, great, but we just needed to make the boat go as fast as we can make it go.

And so everything, everything that they did personally and professionally was filtered through this one question, will it make the boat go faster? So will going out and getting on the piss with my mates on Friday because I need a break, will that make the boat go faster?

Probably not so don't do it. What will make the boat go faster? If you need a break, have a break. If that's gonna make the boat go faster, but getting on the alcohol and staying out late, that's not gonna make the boat go faster so don't do that.

So every decision that they made personally and professionally was filtered through this question, will it make the boat go faster and I suggest that you do that.

So what are the things that are gonna take you to the goals that you want money-wise, time-wise and meaning wise, and I'd suggest that you give them priority. So those activities might be 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of your day, give them priority.

Don't just say I know that they're important and I'll do it when I've got time or I'll do it when I'm not busy. That's the wrong mindset. The right mindset is I'm shutting everything else out and I'm doing it first.

And when you do that, watch what happens when you give priority to the things that are going to move the needle and you do them first and most of those things aren't big things.

They're little things that don't take long. It's the reason that we don't get the success we want is because we keep putting them off. I hope that makes sense. I've created a little thing, just a purpose template.

And it's just got some questions on it that'll help you get clear on what you want financially, time-wise and meaning-wise. If you want that, just reach out to us through the chat, you can put it in the comments and the replay, and we'll get you a copy of that.

And if you want help with any of this sort of stuff, and this is kind of what I'm talking about here is that we are here to help. We are on a mission to change the building industry and get rid of the shitty practices that cause unnecessary pain for everybody involved. That's the builder, the team, the client, everybody.

We're on a mission to change that and we've got a fantastic laboratory called Builders Business Blackbelt, where we're doing all of these things and implementing things, testing them to make sure that they work. So we've got answers, we've got solutions to all of the common problems.

All you need to do is reach out and ask for help and we can have that conversation and it doesn't matter where you are right now, but if you let these limitations like oh, I don't wanna talk to these guys cause they'll try and sell me something or I can't afford coaching or if you let any of those limitations get in your way of just having a bloody conversation, that cost you nothing. You haven't heard that message.

We've got things that can help you. We've got resources, we've got philosophies, we've got proof. We've got a group. We've got evidence. We've got everything that you need to help you with whatever you want in your business.

It's just up to you to reach out. How you do that is you can go over to the left hand side of the nav of the ToolShed and it says get personal help.

Click on that, fill out a form, we'll have a conversation. The other thing you can do is just simply reach out to me in the chat.

Ask your questions, we'll take it from there, we'll see what happens. The bottom line is I can't sell you anything. The only time a purchase happens, anytime a purchase happens, it's your decision.

So reach out and have these conversations because we are absolutely committed to helping builders, but we can't help you if you sit back in the darkness, in the back of the app, and we don't know what's going on, we don't know what you've tried, we don't know where you want to go, we don't know what's in the way in your particular business, because there are different problems.

There aren't that many, but there are different problems. And if you're not working on the right prop, you can put a lot of effort in and not much happens and having that third party perspective.

Look at where you are, where you want to go, we can help you understand what's in the way and what you need to do next to make big gains really quickly so reach out to us.

Idea of the Week

Idea of the week, where's me button, idea of the week, there it is there.

Gee, I sound like I'm gonna repeat myself here, but the idea of the week is just stop making excuses and stop giving your comfort zone priority.

I feel like I've already said this, but it's probably worth repeating.

Giving priority and going to the site first because the guys are on site or doing the administration stuff before you prepared your mind, before you've prepared your plan, before you've worked on the activity that is directly connected to the goals that you wanna accomplish within your business is often outside of the comfort zone.

What you're used to, and what you know is inside of the comfort zone and will tend to give priority to that, will tend to do that first and we keep putting this other stuff off because it's uncomfortable.

We're not quite sure, we're not quite clear on the details, we're not sure how to do it.

So we put it off and we keep putting it off and week after month after year, we keep putting it off and we end up not even in the same place, we end up in a worse position because there is this law of life and it's called the law of never ending improvement.

And it says that you're either green and growing, or you're ripe and rotting. There is no status quo, you can't stay where you are. You're either gonna get better or you're gonna get worse.

Just had an email conversation with a chap who smartly is reaching out. We're gonna help this guy. And he's got something like a $6 million turnover and barely making wages. There's some problems there.

That doesn't have to be like that, you don't have to increase turnover to improve profit. In fact, as this person is experiencing, as turnover went up, profit went down and the financial struggle gets some worse and worse as turnover goes up.

So we've gotta fix the problems first. Then once you've got your business model, so it's working, then you can increase, you can grow. So know what you're working towards.

This is the idea of the week. Stop making excuses and giving comfort zone stuff priority. Know what you are working towards and know what will move the needle towards what you are working towards, the time, money and meaning goals that you've set for yourself.

Commit to priority. From my experience, the stuff that I'm talking about that you need to do would take somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 40 minutes a day, and it would make a massive difference to your business.

And what I'm saying is to give it priority, do it first. And if you wanna know what those things are, that's why we have that conversation.

Wrapping Up

A reminder, how to get the maximum and it all makes sense, it's all flowing with what we're talking about here in this episode, how to maximize your value to the ToolShed is post. Start having conversations with me and everybody else in the ToolShed.

Ask your questions, make your comments, reach out for help. Share your wins and share what you've learned, what you've implemented, what you've changed and it's worked, or a mistake you've made, and a lesson you learned from it.

Share that inside the ToolShed, and you will help everybody else, but you'll get helped as well because other people will be doing the same thing.

If there's something not in the toolbox, in the toolbox, that's what Julie calls it, it's the ToolShed, the app. If there's something not in the ToolShed, there's a suggestion box.

If you feel that there is something missing and there's something that you would see would be beneficial in the ToolShed as a resource or guide or whatever, whack it in the suggestion box. And the last thing is that I'm asking for your help.

So I'm saying help us help you by getting on a conversation with us so we know what your current problems are. If we're only working with the Blackbelt members and the blueprint people, we only know what they're thinking and their thinking has changed.

Like they've only been on a program for weeks and their thinking has already changed. We need to know what you're currently thinking, what you are currently feeling.

So I'd love for you to get on a chat with us and if you do, as I said, the start of the show, we'll give you a free copy of this book.

All you need to do is jump on a conversation with us and we'll post out a free copy of this book as a reward for helping us understanding with as much detail as possible what are the things that are pressing on you and what you would like to be different and how you would like it to be different. And we'll shoot you out a free copy of that book.

So I hope this has been thought provoking. I know it's been thought provoking, and I'm glad that the people who have stayed have stayed live. And if you've watched it through the whole live episode, well done for sticking with it.

If you watch the replay, please ask your questions in the comment section, reach out to us in the chat, let us know what sort of topics you would like covered in the podcast and we'll definitely unpack them for you.

So have a great rest of the week, I look forward to having a chat with you to helping you out. Please re-listen to this podcast. It's very, very powerful. It's just one thing that when you flick that switch, it can make a massive difference. And it's not up to anybody else. It's not up to me.

It's not up to the economy. It's not up to the environment. It's not up to the government. It's up to you. Flip that switch, start to give the things that'll make the difference priority, commit to that priority and watch what happens.

I'm Mick Hawes from Builders Business Blackbelt, that's it for this episode. We'll talk to you again next week, bye for now.