Busy or productive: productivity for contractors

You leave home early, put out one fire after another, and get back at night not knowing what moved forward. If you own a construction, landscaping, or remodeling business, you probably know that feeling.

The day's problems (an upset client, a material that did not arrive, a helper who did not show up) eat up the hours. What is important, like finding new work, reviewing numbers, or training your people, gets left for "later."

This article is for owners and crew leaders who want to go from being busy to being productive. We give you a simple way to organize your day, with examples from a real contractor routine.

In short

• Being busy is reacting to what is urgent. Being productive is moving forward on what makes the business grow.
• A practical way to organize the day: sales, owner learning and system improvement (documenting and delegating).
• Short, fixed blocks on your calendar work better than good intentions.
• Writing down at the end of the day what you did get done helps you see progress.
• This guide is educational. It is best to confirm tax, payroll, or contract decisions with a professional.

Busy vs. productive: what's the difference

Being busy means moving a lot: answering calls, loading the truck, solving the problem of the moment. It is real work, but it almost always responds to what others ask of you.

Being productive means spending part of your day on what moves your business forward: landing the next job, improving your margins, and making the operation not depend only on you.

Armando Ehrenzweig, an ODC consultant, puts it this way: technical work (installing, building, repairing) is necessary, but it is not the only thing that makes a company grow. The owner also needs time to run it.

An example. A roofing contractor finishes a roof at 4 p.m. and rushes off to bid another one. That night he answers messages and doesn't check which bids are still waiting for a reply. He was busy all day, but he made no progress on what pays next month's bills.

The 3 daily priorities of a business owner

It is not an official rule or a guaranteed formula. It is a practical guide so your schedule does not fill up with emergencies alone. Even 30 or 45 minutes per priority changes the course of the week.

1. Sales: secure tomorrow's work

A business without new prospects depends on luck. Set aside a fixed block of time to find work, even if your schedule is full today.

• Follow up on the quotes you sent one or two weeks ago.
• Call three past customers to offer maintenance or a new service.
• Ask a happy customer for a referral.

If you want to go deeper on this topic, read The Art of Selling and Delegating.

2. Learning: study as an owner, not just as a technician

Knowing how to do the work well is not the same as knowing how to run a business. Set aside a short time each week (or each day, if you can) to learn about pricing, costs, hiring, or managing a team.

• Listen to a business podcast while you drive to the job.
• Watch a webinar on how to calculate your margin per job.
• Check the free resources from the SBA (Small Business Administration, the federal agency for small businesses), which has a guide to managing your business.

3. System: document and delegate

If everything depends on you, you have a very demanding job more than a business. According to SCORE (a network of volunteer mentors supported by the SBA), documenting processes and creating written procedures helps keep the business from depending on one person.

• Document a process. The next time you prepare a job, record a short video with your phone explaining the steps. It is your first training manual.
• Define roles. Write down the three main tasks of your crew lead and your general helper.
• Delegate one task. Pick an administrative task, like gathering and organizing invoices, and hand it to someone else. At first it may not come out perfect. Review it and adjust.

A compliance detail: if the person you delegate to is an employee or a subcontractor, the labor and tax rules change. Confirm it with an attorney or a tax preparer before assigning the work.

A sample weekly routine for a contractor

This is a sample routine for the owner of a small remodeling company. Adjust it to your situation.

• Monday, 7:00 a.m. (20 minutes): review the week's calendar and write down the 3 most important things.
• Tuesday and Thursday, 12:00 p.m. (30 minutes): follow up on quotes and call past customers.
• Wednesday, while driving: a podcast episode or a business webinar.
• Friday, 3:00 p.m. (45 minutes): record a process or update a task list for your crew leader.
• Every afternoon (5 minutes): write down what you did get done today.

Put them in your phone's calendar as appointments. The SBA suggests, among other tools, using calendar reminders for deadlines and automating repetitive tasks.

How to see progress and reduce frustration

A long to-do list always seems endless. That is why it also helps to look at what you have already done.

At the end of the day, write down three things you did get done: a quote sent, a process recorded, an invoice delivered. There is research on this effect. Researcher Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School found in studies of employees that feeling progress in meaningful work is an important motivator (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge). These are studies of company employees, not contractors, so take it as an idea to try, not a promise.

To review the big picture, the SBA recommends in its planning guides that you review your goals and results regularly, for example every month or quarter. Also look at your numbers with finances and profitability.

What to do in the off-season

If your work slows down in certain months (because of weather or the type of service), those months are good for working on the business:

• Train your team and yourself.
• Document processes and update your manuals.
• Look into whether you can offer a complementary service, such as preventive maintenance or interior work in winter. First check whether your license and insurance cover it.

Watch the video on YouTube

What to do now

• Open tomorrow's calendar and set aside a 30-minute block for sales.
• Pick a process you repeat and record it with your phone.
• Write down the three main tasks of a position on your team.
• Hand off one administrative task to someone else.
• Tonight, write down three things you did accomplish today.

When to talk to a professional

Talk to an attorney, a tax preparer, a CPA, or an enrolled agent if you are going to hire someone new, change how you pay your people, or expand your services. Every case is different, and the rules change by state and type of work.

How ODC helps you

At Oficina del Contratista we keep your books up to date (bookkeeping) so you can see clearly how much each job earns. Learn about our bookkeeping service for contractors or schedule a business consultation to sort out your priorities.

References

1. U.S. Small Business Administration: Manage your business — official guide to running a small business.
2. U.S. Small Business Administration: Manage your business (counseling) — tools such as calendar reminders and automation of repeated tasks.
3. SCORE: Process Improvement — supports the idea of documenting processes to reduce dependence on the owner.
4. SCORE: Stop Working for Your Business — explains the problem of owners who end up serving the business.
5. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: research on progress and motivation — supports the idea that noticing small wins helps motivation at work.

This article is for information and education only. It is not legal, tax or bookkeeping advice. We are a bookkeeping service: for tax matters, consult a tax preparer, CPA or enrolled agent.