Hurdles to Growth That Contractors Face

At SynkedUP, I get to interact with thousands of contractors, giving me a unique perspective into the hurdles to growth that contractors face.

When visiting contractors on my podcast trips, sometimes a contractor will ask me, “what should I be focusing on to grow my business?”

My high level answer to that is: as the business owner, you can’t view yourself as a “doer of work”.

You need to view yourself as a “builder of systems and processes that do the work.”

Over the next couple weeks on my blog, I’m going to dig into 4 hurdles that I consistently see holding contractors back from growth and/or having a sane worklife.

The theme is based around the idea that eventually “someone other than you as the owner” has to be able to do these 4 things in your business.

If you are the only one that can do them in your business, you are trapped within your own business, and it can’t operate without you for even a day.

Ready for the first one?

Hurdle #1 is: You are the only one that can answer the company phone.

If you as the owner are the only one that can answer the company phone, your day will constantly be getting blown up with interruptions.

Interruptions kill productivity.

And kill your ability to focus and push the business forward.

The good news is that this is something easily outsourced or delegated.

Easily turned into a process.

For example:

I know of contractors that either hire someone to monitor the phone and email, or they outsource it to a company that provides an answering service.

Then instead of getting interrupted dozens of times a day, the answering service can take calls, have screening conversations, and add all the vetted calls that need a response from you as the owner to a list.

Then you as the owner you can have a process of taking an hour of your day, same time every day, and methodically engage and reply.

You have a clear time blocked out for it every day, allowing you to focus when replying and getting back to people, and allowing you to focus when you’re going about the rest of your day.

Both your clients and your team get the best, fully focused version of you.

Win win.

As an owner, you must live your life by design.

Control the controllables.

If you find yourself constantly living in “reactionary” mode, chasing the most urgent thing, greasing the squeaky wheel….

Well… take this as an encouragement and nudge to start designing your calendar instead of reacting to it.

Stay tuned for the other 3 hurdles. I’ll write more on them in the coming weeks.

Cheers!

Weston Zimmerman

SynkedUP founder and CEO