“What’s Your Biggest Job?”

Hi, this is Wayne Rivers at FBI, and We Build Better Contractors.

This week, I want to ask the question, what's your biggest job? And I think your answer is going to be different from my 
answer. So, if you've been to Boot Camp, you've heard this before. This is something that Dennis wrote, I think, in 2018. 
And you think about how prophetic it was at the time. All right. "So, declining in late design performance, increased 
difficulty getting permits and inspections, rising prices, overtaxed PMs and superintendents, lack of redundancy in 
management, lack of sufficiently skilled workforce, tight budgets, increasing costs, increasing pressure on schedules, 
unique teams, unique sites, unique designs, trade stacking. What could possibly go wrong?" All that stuff was going on 
when Dennis wrote that slide. And some of these things are particularly prophetic, given the things that are going on 
today.

So, when I was in Hartford for the Travelers Leadership Conference a few weeks ago, there were four things that came 
out repeatedly in our discussions and Dennis hit on most of these. Number one, inflation. Prices are going nuts. Number 
two, supply chain disruption. So, when you can buy stuff, you can't get it on your site at the time that you need it the 
most. Hiring and retaining talent is it was hard 2018 when Dennis wrote this, but it's insanely hard now. And then most 
contractors this year are going to be bidding their biggest jobs ever in terms of dollar size of the jobs. So, what about this 
is important to you? I'm going to say to you that your biggest job isn't your biggest job. When I think about your biggest 
job, your biggest job is taking care of yourself. Right?

How can you serve your customers, how can you serve your employees, how can you be a good trade partner if you're 
not taking care of yourself? Most contractors are rugged individualists. They're insanely hard workers, incredibly hard 
workers. And so many of us grew up in that era, we have that Vince Lombardi mentality, "Winning isn't everything, it's the 
only thing." Contractors for the most part are achievers. And achievers can drive themselves harder than the average 
person, way harder, orders of magnitude harder. And we think we don't need self-care, which is the term of art these 
days. So, five quick ideas for how to take better care of yourself. The first thing is sleeping. So many people sleep with 
some electronic interference in their bedroom. There's a TV in the bedroom that maybe stays on until late at night. Or 
worse, they have their tablets or their phones right next to the bed.

So, if anybody calls at 5:00 in the morning before you roll out of bed, your sleep is disrupted. Get rid of all that stuff. You 
don't need all that stuff in your bedroom at night. Your bedroom should be quiet, and it should be dark. My wife bought 
these blackout curtains. Man, it made a huge difference. No lights from the street or the neighbors peeping in through 
the corners in the blinds. It just made a big difference in how well we can sleep. The second thing is exercise almost every 
day. It's unrealistic thinking that you could exercise seven days a week. But if you think back to the Happiness blog from 
Neil Pasricha that we did a few weeks ago, getting outside was one of the biggest cures. So, if you can do exercise and 
ideally do it outside, you're killing two birds with one stone. And that's a tremendous stress reliever. And God knows, 
everybody in construction needs stress relief these days.

The third, schedule things. Schedule things you don't normally schedule. You schedule your workday, and you schedule 
doctor appointments and things like that. But why not make appointments with yourself and make appointments with 
your family? So,schedule your exercise, schedule your downtime, your spouse time, your family time. And most important 
of all, schedule your vacations, your space away from work. And when you're away from work, you got to leave that 
laptop, that cell phone behind. You've got to put that stuff away. Because if you're still tethered to the office electronically, 
you're not really on vacation. All right. So, in the Strategic Coach Program that I was in, I know you've heard me talk about 
this before, the first thing we did every 90 days when we planned for our next quarter was we scheduled our away time.
So, schedule your free time first, and then the business will fill in all around it, believe me. But scheduling things is a very 
important discipline you can use.

The fourth thing, this applies to organizing, which is the fourth idea, as much as it does exercise. Everybody watching this 
blog has money, pretty much. Okay. You're successful in the construction business. You have money. Hire somebody, a 
personal trainer. Boy, it's worked like a champ for me on occasion. Personal trainer for exercise and also a personal trainer
for organizing yourself. So, organize yourself at work, but also at home. And you could hire someone to come in. I bet they 
could come in a day and make a huge difference, getting decluttering, figuring out what's really important in your life and 
in your day-to-day work. I think somebody could come in a day or two. You probably wouldn't have to pay them that 
much. And they could really, really, really help you organize yourself, both at work and at home.

And the fifth thing is just say no. Golly, every one of our members is wanted in some way. The church wants them on the 
board, the local bank, the local hospital, volunteering for various things in the community. Everybody is in demand, all of 
our successful members. But you've got to say no to some things. Really, really think about how valuable your time is, 
your 24 hours a day, your 168 hours a week. And zero in on the things that get you the most personal and business payoff, 
the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, from your time investments. So, I'd love to hear your tips. Those are five from 
us. What are your tips for maintaining your biggest job, which is maintaining yourself? This is Wayne Rivers at FBI, and We 
Build Better Contractors.