Six Tips for Kicking Off the New Year Right

Hi, this is Wayne Rivers at FBI where We Build Better Contractors. Happy New Year!

This week I want to give you six tips for kicking the new year off right. Hope you're off to a fast start already. We will have
our 2023 Boot Camp dates being released soon and we hope you'll sign up your high potential people for that.

Now, what about this is important to you? Why would I talk to you about kicking the new year off right? Well, here's tip
number one. Don't treat January, don't treat this new start. It's not a new start. We're going to do this working on the
same projects we worked on in December, but don't treat early January as just another series of workdays at the office.
Get your team fired up, create a new start, reframe, create excitement, enthusiasm.

Politicians talk about when they get elected, they talk about, this is what I'm going to accomplish in my first a hundred
days. Well, maybe we talk about what I'm going to accomplish in my first 30 days of the year, first 60 days of the year,
whatever, but get off to a new start that it just energizes people to think about something new. That's the beauty of
turning the page of the calendar. Not that much changes, but a lot changes at the same time so take advantage of that.

The second thing is, and this gets into self-care a little bit. Block off your personal time, your family time, and you're away
from work time. We always say, someday I'll, someday I'll take more time off. Someday I'll take my wife on that big trip
she wants. Someday I'll take the family on a nice cruise or something. Go ahead and block that time off now. Make your
personal time a priority by creating that space on your calendar right now.

Get with your family and figure out when the kids are out of school and all those things. Get that done straight away,
because if you don't, the pressive work will overwhelm that someday I'll stuff.

I had a member years ago that talked about burnout, and that's the danger if you don't take personal time and you don't
exhibit self-care. He said, Wayne, I don't really think that I'm burned out, but I'm definitely crispy around the edges. If
you're feeling crispy around the edges, the only solution is to get away and give yourself some relaxation.

The third tip is clean up. Look at your desk. Get rid of old plans, old magazines. If you haven't touched, you've intended to
read this business periodical, if it's been sitting on your desk untouched, your intensions are good, your execution's poor,
get rid of it. Throw it in the trashcan. You're not going to look at it. Get rid of old plans, old magazines, old correspondence
that might be sitting there. The business plan that you did in 1998 that you keep meaning, get rid of all that stuff. Clean
up. If you clean up your work area, you clean up your brain.

Also, clean up relationships. Toxic people in your life, in your personal life or your work life. Get rid of those people, they
bring you down. They bring everybody else around them too. You know who they are. The people who can no longer help
you drive the mission. I don't want to be mercenary here, and I know hiring people is a real problem now, but the people
who are no longer helping you advance your personal or your business mission, you really have to evaluate whether you
want them around.

The fourth thing, evaluate your website. Get your eyeballs on your website, click a few links, make sure they work. We
have members that have unbelievable website. I mean really, really good. We've also got members whose website hasn't
been touched in a decade for gosh's sake. I look, I see the little button for news about us, and I realize the last news about
this particular company came from 2014. Are you kidding me? That's a long time ago in business. Eyeball your website,
update it. If you need to hire some people to work on it, do so.

People look at you. The first thing they do when they consider hiring you, come to work for you, anything about you, they
look at your website to try to figure out who you are. If that thing stinks of 2014, well guess what? You're not going to
come out ahead.

All right, the fifth thing, evaluate your leadership team for your high potential people and try to seek out growth and
training opportunities for them. They have high potential, but they're working 60 or 80 hours a week, so to get them that
training they need, you're probably going to have to go outside the company. Try to figure out not only who deserves that
TLC that you can show them, but what avenues boot camp for example, where should you send them for that industry
training?

The sixth thing, review your strategic plan. Dennis and I talk about strategic plans all the time, and for contractors, it makes
sense. Contractors don't move the first cubic yard of dirt on a job site without a plan and yet most, even now, most do not
have an overarching business plan, strategic plan for what their companies are going to look like when they're finished.

Review the mission, vision, and values. Do they really reflect who you are today? Get your team and get their eyeballs on
the plan too. Do a sanity check. There are some things in your plan now that you put in 5 or 10 years ago maybe that just
don't make sense anymore. Just get rid of all that stuff, declutter again. Is your plan realistic and what mostly, construction
is a people business, what are your people plans? How are you going to attract new talent? How are you going to attract
better talent? How are you going to take advantage of the opportunities coming up for you in 2023?

What are your tips for getting off to a fast start in the new year? I'd like to hear from you in the comment section. This is
Wayne Rivers at FBI, where We Build Better Contractors.