Episode Transcript
[00:00:13] Speaker A: You're listening to the Total profit podcast. I'm T2 your host, and I'm here with the man that thinks checking Your email every 10 minutes is not leadership, it's a cry for help.
So, Tommy P, what's up?
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. So good to be here.
Just the other day you were telling me that people don't use stamps anymore.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Now some people think checking Your email every 10 minutes is staying engaged. Right. I have a different definition of that. That is not my definition of it. I call it operational anxiety.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: And so this episode is for every founder who's built a business but still feels very chained to it. The inbox, the texts, the fire drills, the decisions that you have to make. If your team can't make a move without you, you are not leading them. You are just. You're babysitting.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: You're babysitting them and you're babysitting your business. So I always like to start out with a story. We had a client, we'll call him Drew.
And Drew had a roofing company.
Revenue was up, but he was still pulling 70 hour weeks. Do you remember this guy? His wife called, I don't know if I ever told you this, his wife called him the Chief Everything Officer. CEO. The Chief Everything Officer. Every invoice, every schedule, every decision ran through him. And one day he told me T2, he said, I just, I feel like the bottleneck in my own company. And I said, well, you are. You are. He wasn't wrong. That kind of control will kill your ability to scale. It also kills your sanity.
And it's not just exhausting, but it's expensive. We can tie it back to a real cost of the business, can't we?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. It was, it was said in a book that I read, you can do anything.
You just can't do everything.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: You can't. Yeah, you can do everything you want, whatever, but you can't do it all at once.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: You can't do it all at the same time.
So here's what shifted. When Drew joined Total Profit Management. We didn't just patch his profit margins. We helped him build this whole accountability system.
And the real win was about 90 days later.
He took a four day weekend and he didn't check his email once. He told me the business did not implode because at that point we had put some structure in place for him. And Total Profit Management gave him that visibility without micromanaging.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: His family probably didn't realize you could live that long outside of his business.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Chief Everything Officer.
So let's break down some of the things that we install during onboarding that make this possible. Number one, that role clarity and accountability.
Every team member gets a defined role with a scorecard. No more who owns what. Chaos Weekly check ins to track those outcomes and not just activity. Talk to me a little bit about assigning roles based on outcomes, not tasks.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Because when you build your employees to think and do, they will evolve into the point where they will just consult you infrequently for those tough questions and you give them and it's buy in by the employees. We talked about this in prior podcasts that you empower your employees to make decisions and it'll be profitable tenfold back to you.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: And they know what's expected of them, they know the outcome you're looking for. Not just what I'm responsible for in terms of a list of tasks, but they know the result that you want from them. And so that's what they're working toward. They have a target in mind and when you empower them, they have the ability to make decisions in order to achieve that target. And then they can report to you, hey boss, we did X, Y and Z and it's great. So number one, role clarity and accountability.
That's an important one. Number two, dashboards that matter.
Owners seeing those leading indicators, the job progress, the ar, aging, the gross margin by job, that real time financial clarity is less emotional decision making and more math.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Right. And we bring it out in the performance margin software. It's the owner's dashboard, that's where he runs his business.
And then the accounting systems will take care of themselves.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: They will. So number one is role clarity and accountability. Number two, dashboards that matter and help. Number three is that margin based priority, margin based prioritization.
Focus shifts from staying busy to protecting and expanding your margins. Which is really, I think the litmus test of the strong leader of a business. Right. Owners will step out of the weeds and into that strategic leadership.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: And it's probably the most important one that we're going to discuss because this puts the money in your checkbook.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Right.
And number four is that team autonomy with guardrails. Team autonomy with guardrails. So standard operating procedures, workflows that make those decisions repeatable, the staff feels empowered and owners can breathe.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Exactly. And it's okay if your crews perform differently. You just have to account for that when you're putting a bid together to know what crew is going to perform the work and price it accordingly.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: When you have clarity in your Roles and your numbers and in your systems. When you've got clarity around all those things, you stop leading reactively and you start acting a lot more proactively and you're leading with intention.
And here's the financial kicker. Owners think that hiring more people gives them time back, and it doesn't unless they've got the right systems in place. And that's a really critical difference. Otherwise, like you always say, you're just multiplying the chaos.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Whether you're scaling $1 or a million dollars, what are you multiplying? Are you multiplying clarity or are you multiplying chaos?
So you don't need more bodies, you need more structure. And you can't afford to confuse that busyness with profitability.
Being busy doesn't necessarily mean that you're moving the business forward.
Here's the total profit management reality check. You should be able to step away from your business for 72 hours and have those wheels keep turning. Absolutely. If you can't, that is a system problem. That's not a staff problem.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: All right.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Training your employees to ask you questions is not training.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Exactly.
So the performance margin zone phase six is reclaiming control through your leadership. This is the final identity shift. It's when our clients stop surviving and they start leading. You're not a task manager anymore. You are a mission driven CEO.
And the real win is that you're not checking in every five minutes. Right. Because you've built something that doesn't fall apart without you. So your challenge this week is to rate yourself.
And if you disappeared for three days, is your business going to thrive? Is it going to barely survive or is it going to crash?
If the answer scares you, don't panic, but don't ignore that either. Give us a call. Start by defining roles. Set up your scorecards. Don't just lead harder, lead smarter. Okay, Next week we're going to talk about the bigger lens. What happens when you make margin the mission and not a miracle.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: And please know we're not just talking about what you should do. We will teach you how to do it. We have resources we can share with them and make it training for the owners and teach you some pretty neat things that once you implement them, you get your time back or buy back your time. So it's really fun to work with the owners and watch these progressions.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to be talking about legacy level leadership. All right, so you don't want to miss that one until then.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Absolutely. If your leadership is leaning you into, you know, where am I going next? It's okay. Take her.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: It's all under control.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Don't get too excited.
