It’s a New Year! Now What Do I Do?
High achieving contractors tend to be very hard on themselves – their own harshest critics you might say. We tend to dwell on our failures or shortcomings of last year in efforts to learn and challenge ourselves to be better contractors. But is this the right way to begin a new year?
Please tune in this week as Wayne gives you a dramatically different perspective along with four tips for getting your year off to a fast start with only a precious few high impact objectives. We’d like to hear about your successful (or unsuccessful, perhaps) planning routines for getting a new year off with a bang. Please share with us in the comments section. Thank you.
Our March and April Contractor Business Boot Camp classes are already booking seats – in fact, the Denver class is almost full! Please enroll your high potential future leaders so they can learn the business of construction. The Raleigh class is March 24-25, 2022, and the Denver class is April 28-29, 2022. Please contact Charlotte at [email protected] for more information.
Hello, this is Wayne Rivers at FBI, and We Build Better Contractors.
It's '22. It's a new year. What do I do? Oh my. Contractors are really hard on themselves. You've worked super hard all
year long, you take a few days off at the end of the year, you hopefully relax and enjoy the holidays with your family, and
then boom, you're right back at it on January 02nd again. You're never far away from the hard work when it comes to
construction. The bad news is it's really a tough time, a challenging time to be a contractor. The good news is it's a great
time to be a contractor, a really, really, really good time to be in the construction business.
As leaders and high achievers, we tend to be really hard on ourselves. We think about mostly the things that we failed to
accomplish in a given period. So, as you look back at '21, you say, "Golly, we really didn't get that job. If we'd only gotten
that job, the year would've been that much better." All right. I want you to put that behind you. It's a new year. Put that
negative thinking, Zig Ziglar would say "stinking thinking," put the stinking thinking behind you and let's focus on the
positives for a little bit.
What about this is important to you? We're too hard on ourselves. You've really got to celebrate your accomplishments
and not spend quite so much time thinking about the periods, the times, the efforts, that didn't quite make it and you
came up short, okay. So here are four tips for how to start off 2022 with a bang.
The first one is celebrate your victories from '21. Get your team together. Review your calendars, review your
correspondence. Ask them for their highlights for the year, and then celebrate all these things with the team.
A few years ago, I'm watching a college basketball game and Duke won the game, and Coach K is being interviewed
afterwards, and the reporter asked him, "What do you think was the key to the game?" He didn't talk about a spectacular
dunk or a three-point shot or a great pass or anything like that. He said, "I really thought when the pressure was on at the
end of the game, that we did a good job getting the ball in bounds." That struck me as being odd. It made me stop and
think. Getting the ball in bounds, such a basic thing. Who was he talking to? Was he talking to the reporter or the TV
audience? Not so much. I think he was talking to his team, and he was emphasizing first a small victory. Second though,
he was emphasizing the fundamentals, but without that small victory of getting the ball in bounds, there's nothing else to
come on the offense, right? You're not going to score, because you failed to do the first most basic step, and that's getting
the ball in bound.
Think about that with your team. What little things happened in '21 that helped you get down the court and score? What
were your big accomplishments? What were the things that you're really proud of? I'm not just talking about job stuff. I'm
talking about cultural stuff, people stuff, what people really stepped up and made an extra effort to make '21 special for
everyone. So, recognize your accomplishments, your people, and all of the little things that add up to make an entire
business year.
Number two. Two, three, and four, I want you to think about one thing only, okay. Try to distill down to one thing. The
first thing is what one thing do you as a leader in your company need to do to make '22 a success? Not 10 things, not a
hundred things. There are hundreds of things that you must do. What one thing, if you do it really well, would make '22 a
success for you and your company, okay?
Second. Well, this is actually third, sorry. What one thing should you stop doing? What one thing should you cease? What
one place should you get out of the way? What one thing do you hate doing that makes you miserable? What one thing
can you stop doing to make '22 a success?
And finally, what thing do you need to clean up? Things that we don't clean up linger. They clutter up our minds. They
clutter up our lives. They cause anxiety and fear and foreboding and loathing, and we don't want any of those things. So,
what one thing do you need to clean up?
I'll give you a story. One of our former CEOs of a Fortune 100 construction company said that for years he kept a rainmaker
on because let's face it, this guy was a rainmaker. He knew he was a bad cultural fit, knew he caused problems within the
team, but he was a rainmaker and he kept him around. Finally, he decided it was too much. He pulled the trigger; the guy
was gone, and he realized in his heart he had waited three or four years too long. The person, sure, he was a rainmaker,
but he damaged the culture. He brought down the rest of the team. That was something that my guy knew that he should
have cleaned up years before, but he didn't. So, what one thing can you clean up in '22 that'll make the year a bigger and
better success for you and your team?
I'd like to hear what you're doing to make things better. Don't forget about our Boot Camp in Raleigh in late March, our
Boot Camp in Denver in late April. Our western folks, we're coming to you in Denver, April, I think it's 28 and 29, 2022 so
don't forget to sign up your folks.
This is Wayne Rivers at FBI, and We Build Better Contractors.
