Episode 148 - Delegate That! (Law of Hinderance)

Hello, happy Friday and welcome back to another episode of Electric Pernur's Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where a couple of master electricians with business addictions help you to master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Joseph, I got to ask you would it be wrong of us to want to do that for these listeners of ours?

Not a chance. I love the fact once again. Would it be wrong, Of course, not Go for it Full send.

Happy Friday. It's my favorite line. I try to say it lots so that I can keep saying it in my everyday life, because I love that you brought that one to the game here.

Thank you, and you know, the best thing about it is and I hate to make a quick segue off of it but I've always believed in operating from an ethical place, because I never want to feel like I'm selling something to someone that they don't need or want. So by creating the question of was I wrong to want to offer you a higher level of service, even if it costs a little bit more, like would that disqualify me? Am I wrong for wanting to serve you at that level? It almost always ended with no, you're not wrong. Okay, so what is the concern? And now we can go right into it, handling what the real objection was.

Yeah, I love that man and that's why they call you the sales bot, as it says right there. Usually I would say we got rid of the fancy shit, but we're just enjoying this lightning bolt in the background, given our stream yard account and try to represent here. And, of course, last week I had my favorite self given nickname, the pleasant peasant from the north, the Canadian who will hold doors open and thank you for walking through. And then we got Joe kicking the sales knowledge, little objection and pre objection handling there from Joseph the sales bot. Luke Canny, it's Friday. Guys, don't blame us for being a little on the upside here. We got some good energy to share with you as we finally get to finish talking about this week's topic making the most of your time dealing with this overwhelm. As we said earlier on Wednesday, if you got the value piece, offense over overwhelm, making it count the importance of holidays, how your staff need it to, and they need that, that discipline, that that continual and consistent leadership to show them, not just tell them, that it's okay to have a good schedule with good intention behind it. Man, I've just been fired up about this, Joe. All week long, I love it. I'm from you and you're weak off, honestly.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that it's. And one of those things is I'm I haven't stressed it enough and I'm going to say it again here I really don't do well taking time off, but you gave me a true gift, which was allowing me to take the time away and knowingly well enough to say no, Joe, you're not coming back to check in on things, Take the time, you deserve it. And I'm back and so pumped and full of life energy I just want to share it with everyone.

Awesome. Well, you deserve it. So yesterday we talked about the laws of time, business and delegation. Of course, really, what that boiled down to was this law of open cycles, and man, I think we nailed that thing. I mean, if that didn't feel important to you guys or you didn't hear that yet, please go back, go back to Monday, listen this whole week. But Wednesday, thursday, oh boy, there's some big value there and we just giving it away, right, that's our routine. We're giving you all the value we can because it wasn't there for us. This is such an important mission for us and we're just so happy you would join and have a listen on, into some of the things that we feel are so important, like today's topic, really delegating, that. The law of hindrance ties directly in to what we were saying yesterday and it's just. It would be wrong, joe, it would be wrong not to share this as like a conclusion, a closer for this week. So can I tell you a bit about what the law of hindrance is?

I'd be mad if he didn't.

All right, the law of open cycles talked a lot about delegating and how we kind of went into the controversial topic of who we should hire first. Who do we delegate to? Who is that magical person that's going to set us apart, set us on our path to success and everything that we envision? And guess what? The law of hindrance is everything that gets in the way of that. It's two things. Number one is discipline. This ties in perfectly with yesterday too, because, and this whole week, when we talk about discipline as an entrepreneur, as an electricpreneur, discipline we're talking about is being able to continually prioritize and work through what needs fixing next, what our next biggest priority is. The second part of the law of hindrance is trust.

That one's gonna hit harm for people.

It's trusting to delegate. It's trusting the plan. It's trusting to run the play consistently and not tell us things don't work, but trusting that you could show us things won't work. Please jump in.

The reason why I wanted to put my hand up on this was trust is so hard for so many people, and the reason why I say that is because I was that guy too. If you're listening in the background, I want you to put a hand up when, if you say, have you ever been the person that said if you want something done, you have to do it yourself? So many of us are in that position to where we think the only competent individual is this one. That's it. No one else will be able to learn it. No one could learn it. No one could do it. It is a completely self-task and no one else has a hand in it. That is poison. That is poison for yourself, for your health and for your business, and we have to learn that other people, if they're not currently capable, you can train them to be capable. We have to have faith in our fellow humanity.

Totally Remember. Yesterday we were talking about, hey, with this first hire being an office manager, that's gonna eliminate some of the pains that come with the trust of bringing in another electrician to maintain your great reputation for premium service without training. Right, if you really think about this, when you bring an electrician in and you're not systemized you don't have a training, a scheduled training or an approach to train that person then what you're actually hoping for is that this person has something to teach you about service, because that's the only way that they could actually be above expectation is if they were bringing more training with them and those expectations that they were prior or previously under were actually exceeding yours. Because the reality is, mismanagement of expectations are one of the biggest problems on the planet. With your clients, with your kids, with your spouse, with teachers, with professionals, with everyone, most things come down to communication. Would you agree with that?

I would, and it's one of the reasons why we've learned that sales isn't something you do to someone, it's something you do for someone. Learning to communicate in a better way is something that you do to your spouse, to your children, to your employees, to your clients. Communications keep, and that's the most cornerstone statement we have.

Yeah, yeah, really really powerful thing. So now imagine if you get an electrician that isn't above and beyond your expectations, then what happens?

I mean, unfortunately, it's the same thing that a lot of people end up finding themselves in, Like, oh, you know this generation. They don't have a good work ethic, Really Okay. Well, what have you done to train them? Oh, these kids, they don't know what they're doing, Great. Show me your standard operating procedures so we can understand their training regimen. Oh, they don't have one, Okay, great. So whose fault is it now that they're not performing the task right?

Right, there is no bad students, only bad teachers. And we talked about McDonald's the other day and, joe, this is something that we have in common. Both of us could go to our local McDonald's and have this. We could be on a Zoom call like this and literally have the same experience, and some kid right in the back made that whose parents still can't get them to consistently brush their teeth. That's how good the training and the systems are at a big franchise like McDonald's. So this is where that discipline again, the law of hindrance and the discipline comes in to help you actually succeed in business. I'm going to tie both of them in discipline and trust. Actually, let's go back to this journey person example If they're not above expectations, but below, if that's the case, likely, we don't have the discipline to have had procedures built, systems built, a training around how to do what it is that we do. There's a lot of pieces and this might be overwhelming to some, but recognizing what is our offer, what do we do here? It's not as simple as well. You should know how to wire this. You should know it's common sense to just talk to people this way. It's common sense to say this at this time. It's not a real thing. You have to train to expectations and then hold people accountable to the training, not the expectation. Does that make sense, god? I?

don't know if you can watch. I mean, I'm sure if you're listening this you couldn't see it, but for those who are watching the live, me squirming in the background was a real thing, because the word common sense almost is insulting To where you say to yourself well, how is it common sense? Did you just innately wake up one morning and have it? Is it something that you could just have by just walking around in society? It's like no, we are in a specialized trade. This is something that requires delegation and licensing and training, and that you expect people to just know it. It's not possible, it's not feasible and it's not fair. We have to be able to train to the expectations of which we want. If we're not willing to train it, we don't deserve to expect it.

Definitely, man. Full agreement here. Going back to our journey person, again, this keeps getting deeper, right? What happens next? Well, if they're not up to expectation, then we start going. Well, I guess we're more ride-alongs. I guess we have to work together. I guess I can't trust you to take the van home. I guess this. I guess that If you find yourself even using these words like this, is a little slap on the hand we got to stop guessing right but that trust disintegrates and micromanagement actually begins to extend. Have you ever been micromanaged before, joe?

It is one of the greatest and most miserable things I've ever experienced in my life. Micromanaging can be a blessing to people like me, because we love the routine and the structure, but it can sometimes be the most insulting thing, because being micromanaged questions your own intelligence, where someone's like no, can you really tie your shoes. No, you know what? Let me help you with that. You'll figure it out. Just watch me tie your shoes for you. It's like what? No, that's not going to make me want to work harder for you.

Exactly, and so inevitably, what happens between us and our journey person that we hired. Now.

There's distance and so force distance, and they're less likely to want to ask you for things. It's like being in a relationship with a spouse where you don't do the thing because you want them happy. You do the thing because you're trying to keep them from complaining. That's what your employee is going to be doing, where they're going to just do what they think they need to do to keep you from riding them, and that's not the culture we need to establish with our teams.

I agree, man. I agree with this big wedge. The gap grows. Projection withdrawal, as we know right, it's in every relationship book on the planet, and it all stems from this communication. What were my expectations? How was I trained to live up to them? And now that that didn't happen, I'm being micromanaged, treated like I'm in competent and I don't want to work here anymore. Joe, I'm leaving angry, upset at either my deficiencies or yours, or the combination of both. Either way, both, both parties lose the value, and that's what's so important about the law of hindrance. That is called the law of hindrance because it's literally holding you back. It's the reason why we don't succeed. It's the reason why shops tend to implode when they tend to grow so quickly. It's the reason for all of this trouble, when really all we had to do was step back and stay focused on what is our queen be role? What are those things that I'm so good at and need to continue to really be the foresat? Until it's a written document, a training that I can teach and have my staff experience in both written, auditory and even kinetic Right. And then where is the discipline for us to establish a training session, our clients that are training hard men that really have winning teams. You realize they're training every day of the week, half hour to 45 minutes.

And thing is it should be expected. And the thing is, I think too many people don't think that's equating to success. Like when I was in my van, I wouldn't listen to anything other than training material. That's all that. It was all the time, constantly, until it became autopilot, and you can't expect someone to just wake up and know it. They have to put in the coin and turn the crank in order to get the reward.

Absolutely, man. Well said, you know what it's Friday. We got a nice concise little episode here. Was there anything else you wanted to unbutton unpackage there? Or can we jump into action items and really make the most of what we got here?

I think action and all stars are necessary at this point, because it's not one thing to say what to do Now. I want people to understand. How do I get there?

Absolutely so. Tying this back into yesterday, I want to challenge you guys to look at your history. I want to challenge you to look at your organization. Have you ever seen an org chart? I'll give you guys a tidbit. Here's the way we look at it. Most org charts show the owner up top and, conveniently, everything water fall down so nicely. We flip that shit upside down and follow what's called an inverted org chart. Why? Because I want you to recognize the amount of weight that you're balancing and you're holding on this little fragile point on the back of your neck. It's all on your shoulders and your neck and it's excruciating and it's keeping you up at night. So where does our discipline tie in? To say, look at all the things I'm doing, look at all the things I need to stay focused doing. These are my queen bee rules and here's all the things I need to get focused on delegating. Is that a good start, joe?

Yeah, I'm 100% for that.

All right, do you have an all star in mind?

Yeah, but realistically, with an all star action, what we need to do is always be in alignment with our core value to our team. What I mean by that is this we know that our team needs to be trained and they need to be able to do these things in order to succeed, but we also need to know that, if we're this linchpin person, that we need to initiate that training, because it's not going to happen without us. The goal is is your almost the way? It's a good visual. Imagine spinning a wheel right, and the more you spin it, the longer it can spin by itself, until eventually you can train someone to spin it for you. That's what we're trying to do with our teams. So the all star action isn't just saying I need to train them. The all star action is saying you need to physically have it on your calendar. This has to be a non-negotiable of every single week, even at the bare minimum, just doing it once a week. But it has to be there and it has to be as non-negotiable as you showing up to a client's house. This needs to be blocked out on your calendar. You say that be a fair all star.

Powerful man, really powerful. Listen, if you guys did everything we've talked about this week, you are well on your way to being established as a serious service provider in your area, a premium one at that, because you'll be able to attract more staff by having a more regimented schedule and, honestly, leadership they can trust with their own needs, desires and problems. You'll have greater clientele because that team effectiveness and efficiency will drive up. You'll have better relationships, better communication, more stability at home for yourself and for your staff, which means more again for your clients, which does add up to more revenue, working with the kind of people that you want to work with. Now. I don't think this is that insane to really conceptualize, is it Joe?

No, I mean, it may be hard for some people that are under just under that weight of the constant burden of managing that mental exercise. But I promise you that the only way to get that weight off your shoulders is to even put one grain of sand down. And the more you can put down and delegate elsewhere, the lighter, even in the smallest increment amount, it will decrease your load. And the less you have on your shoulders and the more team members you have around you to help you carry the load, the more effective you will be across the board.

Love it. Super pumped about that. How do you eat an elephant Joe, One freaking bite at a time. All right, I urge you guys to do the same. This has been another week, another great week of Electric Pinner Secrets man, the Electricians podcast. We're 148,. I can't believe another week's gone. I can't believe September is here. I cannot believe any of this man. But it's fall time and I cannot wait to jump back here Monday for another episode of the Electricians podcast where a couple of master electricians with business addictions help our community master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level service. Cheers guys, take care Jens.

Bye, bye.