It is 5:30 in the morning. Nobody is going to call you if you sleep in. Nobody will write you up if you skip the estimate follow ups again. Nobody checks whether you looked at the numbers this week.
That is the deal when you own the company. You get the freedom. You also lose the boss, the coach and the schedule that used to make you show up.
Most owners do not fail because they are lazy. They fail because nobody is watching, and the hard stuff slides one day at a time.
Dre Baldwin knows this better than most. He played one year of high school basketball and spent it on the bench. No college recruited him. He walked on at a Division III school. Then he paid his own way to an exposure camp, played well, and signed his first pro contract in Lithuania. He played nearly ten years overseas. Today he coaches business owners through his company, Work On Your Game.
Nobody handed Dre any of that. He showed up when no one asked him to. On a recent episode of Driven To Win, he laid out how he does it. Here is what it means for contractors, trades and home service owners.
How do you hold yourself accountable when you own the business?
You review your crew. You check their work. You hold them to a standard. Who does that for you?
Dre does what he calls an internal employee review every day. He looks at his own habits and makes one of three calls on each one. Keep it. Adjust it. Remove it.
That is simple enough to do on the drive home. Did I return every call today? Keep. Did I spend two hours in the truck answering texts a lead should handle? Adjust. Did I scroll my phone for 40 minutes before bed? Remove.
A once a year review is too slow. Bad habits can cost you a whole season before you notice them. A daily review catches them in a week.
How do you stop wasting energy on the same decisions?
Owners burn a lot of energy on decisions they already made. Should I give this customer a discount? Should I take this job that is outside our area? Should I check email before the morning huddle?
Dre likes clear yes or no rules. He uses food as an example. He did not cut back on sugar. He cut it out. A rule like that removes the daily debate.
You can do the same in your business. We do not take jobs under a set dollar amount. We do not start work without a signed contract and deposit. I do not check email until after the 7am crew meeting. Each rule is one decision you never have to make again.
He also says vanilla only works in ice cream. Middle of the road thinking gets middle of the road results. A clear rule beats a good intention.
What will your business goal really cost you?
A lot of owners say they want to hit $5 million. Fewer have asked what it will take. More crews. More managers. More cash tied up in receivables. Maybe more nights away from home.
Dre says to define what success means and what it costs. When that is fuzzy, most people do nothing. When it is clear, you can decide if you are willing to pay the price, and you stop second guessing every day.
Write down the goal. Then write down what it will cost in time, money and stress. If you look at that list and still want it, you will find it a lot easier to get up at 5:30.
How do you turn a big goal into a step you can take today?
Dre builds what he calls a reverse roadmap. Start with the goal. Then ask what has to be true the step before that. Then the step before that. Keep going until you reach today.
Say you want to step off the tools for good in 18 months. What has to be true the month before? A lead tech who can run jobs without calling you. Before that, a written process for how a job runs from start to finish. Before that, someone you are training. Before that, a hire.
Now today's job is clear. Write the job post. Discipline is easier when you know exactly what the next step is.
When should you quit a plan, and when should you change it?
Sometimes the plan is not working. Dre makes a sharp point here. Quitting and walking away in strength are not the same thing.
Quitting means you drop the goal. Walking away in strength means you keep the goal and pick a better vehicle. In his words, you have to be in the right vehicle to get to where you want to go.
For an owner that might mean dropping a service line that eats your margin. It might mean firing a customer who pays slow and yells loud. The goal stays the same. The path changes.
He also says to check your formula. If you keep working hard and the results stay bad, your information may be wrong. Find people who already have the results you want and learn from them.
How long does it take to build a new habit?
Do not expect a new habit to stick in a week. A study from University College London found it took people an average of 66 days to form a new habit, and some took far longer. Missing one day did not ruin it. Quitting did.
That lines up with Dre's story. He did not get to the pros on one good camp. He showed up for years before anyone was paying attention.
Where should a business owner start this week?
Pick three things and do them for the next seven days.
Run a two minute review on the drive home every day. Keep, adjust or remove.
Write one binary rule for your business and tell your team.
Write your 18 month goal and work it backward to one task you can do this week.
Discipline is not about being tough for one big day. It is about showing up on the boring days when nobody is watching.
If you are not sure where your week actually goes, start there. Our free workbooks and the Owner Time Audit are on the Gathering The Kings tools page. They show you which hours belong to you and which ones belong to someone else on your team.
Listen to the full conversation with Dre Baldwin on Driven To Win.
This article was written by the Gathering The Kings team from Driven To Win episode 449 with Dre Baldwin.
