How to motivate your team to get sh*t done

Andy 
Hell yeah.

Ange
Hey, before we get into today’s show, why don’t you come and meet Andy and I, in person at Lifestyle Tradie Live this May.

Andy 
There is a better way to run a trade business if you know the right structure and systems. Register now by heading to lifestyletradie.com.au and get your ticket today.

Ange
Yes, we are coming to a capital city near you. This is an event for every trade business owner who wants to change chaos to control, get back their time and make more profit.

Andy 
Go on, you know, you deserve more freedom. Now let’s get on with the episode.

Ange
Hey everyone, and welcome to a brand new season of The Tradie Show.

Andy 
Hell yeah.

Ange
Yeah. We’re so excited to be kicking off season nine with you all, and for our returning listeners, welcome back and thank you for continually tuning in and giving Andy and I such amazing feedback on what you say is really valuable conversation and solid content. We’re a hundred percent dedicated to elevating the trade industry and to ensure every single trade business owner and contractor makes profit and gains back their time. So your feedback that we’ve helped a lot of you in your trade business really, really makes our hearts sing.

Andy 
Oh no. Really though, we absolutely love what we do, and we love knowing that our podcast is helping you all out. And if you are tuning in for the very first time, well welcome to the gang. And every week we release a new episode with some awesome trade business specific strategies from either ourselves or some red hot guest who really knows their stuff.

Ange
Yeah, exactly. So for a bit of background for you who perhaps don’t know, Andy and I, we’ve been educating trade business owners and contractors through our business Lifestyle Tradie for over 14 years. We basically help them make more profit and gain back time by implementing the right business model. Ultimately, this will give you the power and the confidence and the freedom to choose how you live each and every day.

Andy 
A hundred percent. And we owned and operated our own award-winning plumbing business, Dr. Drip for over 20 years. And we’ve experienced some really high highs, and I can tell you some deep, low lows along the way. You know, we grew our team to a team of 17 and enjoyed the glory days. Then guess what? Things started to go a little bit pear shaped, but when faced with a broken business that needed some serious fixing and fast, we had to learn the hard way. But in 13 short months, the business was strong again, and I was only working two hours a week in the business. You know, and you can only imagine, we learned plenty of lessons along the way, and now we wanna prevent every single one of you out there from having a similar experience as we did. So we wanna share what we did to turn it all around, and hence, make sure you fast track success by following in our footsteps.

Ange
Yeah, which is why we started Lifestyle Tradie and hence why we started this podcast, The Tradie Show.

Andy 
Woo. Yes. And you are all quickly gonna get used to my yelling, my rants, and sometimes I stumble over my words just a little. And as my son says, I spell pharmacy with an F. So

Ange
I don’t think you really spell pharmacy with an F.

Andy 
I don’t. But he loves to say that.

Ange
I still don’t think I’ve gotten used to you yelling and we’ve been together for 25 years. But you know, whatever you say.

Andy 
No, not used to you yelling sometimes too. Hmm. Um, anyway, maybe the show needs to come with a big Hell yeah, disclaimer about keeping the volume low.

Ange
Maybe. Alright, so with intros done, let’s get stuck into the first episode of season nine.

Andy 
For sure and if you are listening right now and you have a team, then you will love today’s topic because it’s a common frustration I hear from business owners all the time, or perhaps you don’t have a team, then this will still relate because we have a great opportunity now to set you up right before you build your team. So a common sentence I hear from trade and contracting business owners that have a team is, my team isn’t doing what I asked them to do, and my first response is, well, what are you doing to keep them accountable?

Ange
Well, that’s a great response, but I would also add, how did you show them what you wanted them to do?

Andy 
Yeah, well, it’s all well and good to get frustrated when things aren’t going to plan, but have you actually set them up to succeed in the first place? And if you have, have you created a culture of accountability so that your team feels motivated to contribute to the success of the business?

Ange
All really good questions.

Andy 
Definitely.

Ange
So let me ask you this then, Andy. What did you do in Dr. Drip to set your team up for success? And then how did you keep them accountable along the way?

Andy 
Well, I think first and foremost, you have to go back to the basics and ask, did you employ the right team member? Are they a rockstar? I mean, not all recruits are created equal, right? I think we all know that, but a rockstar to me is someone that has the right attitude. They have attention to detail. They are willing to learn and hence happy to follow the processes you set out for them. They are definitely team players. They are friendly and then they need to have the skills you need to complete the work.

Ange
Agreed. Like if you’re a plumber working with residential customers, they need to know the maintenance style of work versus working on a new build.

Andy 
Exactly. But the type of person they are, meaning their attitude is actually more important to me than their skillset. You know, I can teach them how to use a jetting machine, but I can’t teach them to be a nice person or to help out their teammates after hours when their shit hits the fence.

Ange
Yeah, I agree.

Andy 
And you have to start getting their onboarding right. I mean, the team needs to know how you want them to approach every single job. Like, when they turn up at the front door, they’re clean and they’re tidy. They have a massive smile on their face, and you know, They really connect with the customer. All that stuff is super important. Plus the flow of every single job, every step needs to be taught so that each tradesperson in their team does exactly the same thing every single time. Because if you can do that, You don’t get the normal errors.

Ange
So what you’re saying is the flow of every single job has to be done the same every single time by all of your team members, right?

Andy 
Exactly.

Ange
So there’s no room for any tradie to basically go off and do their own thing. Not if you’ve trained them, right?

Andy 
Yeah, exactly. And not if you’ve done your job as the owner of the business and given them the right direction from the very start. You know, I see so many trade business owners in my game simply stick a new recruit in the car with them. Tell ’em over and over again how they expect them to operate. But when they’re given their own car and left to their own devices, they can’t remember a word of what he said and they simply default back to what they know best, which was probably pretty average from the last company they worked for.

Ange
Yeah, ouch. Then perhaps they actually yell and scream when they realize the tradie isn’t doing the things that they wanted them to do. But how could they possibly have remembered when it was all completely verbal from the start?

Andy 
And then you can be one of those businesses that just have a revolving door. They get staff one day and gone the next.

Ange
Exactly.

Andy 
And everyone, the best way to teach your tradies the flow of a job and to make sure they don’t miss a step is through systems.

Ange
Yeah. Systems are seriously the key to running a well-oiled machine. They literally document the way we do things around here.

Andy 
In Dr. Drip, we had a lot of one page flow charts that were documented, you know, step by step processes, you know, things even for the job management systems, how to add a job? How to send an invoice to the customer? How to manage a vehicle accident? You name it. We had it and the boys hall had them loaded on their iPad. And it just saved so much time.

Ange
Yeah. And no excuse not to succeed.

Andy 
No excuse not to do things the right way, because we had it all there in front of them and every single team member did it the same way.

Ange
That’s right. This also happened in the office too though. So we also had these one page flow charts with daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. That was all loaded into a project management tool like Asana or BaseCamp, and every task in the business then is scheduled for when and who needs to complete it. So nothing was ever forgotten.

Andy 
I remember the good old days when I had posted notes everywhere, baby. There’s no more when you set up something like Asana.

Ange
Yeah. I think it’s all about removing the, oh, I didn’t know how to do that, or I didn’t know it needed to be done. Like all these excuses that all the team can give you if you just haven’t set them up to succeed in the first place.

Andy 
Yeah, systems will totally be the key to setting them up well to get shit done the way you want it done. You know, the challenge I see though is that it can actually create an issue with the tradies in the field by having an expectation that it must be done completely your way.

Ange
Well, what do you mean by your way?

Andy 
Well, if the team gets the chance to be a little lazy and not use their own brain to make a decision about work they are faced with, you know, what do they do? They simply call you saying, how do I do this?

Ange
Whoa, that makes sense, I suppose. So they totally need to be able to make their own decisions about the work. We never taught our new plumbers how to say, change a tap washer. It was just expected that they know how.

Andy 
Yeah. Or deal with a tricky situation that perhaps had options to resolve.

Ange
Well, the only thing I’d challenge is apprentices are perhaps a different story. Hey. But if you hire someone that’s qualified and they have experience in the style of work you do, then they’re basically on their own and should make their own decisions.

Andy 
Well, Ange, you’d think so, and this is where I’ve made a fatal mistake in the past.

Ange
Mm. Do tell.

Andy 
Well, you’ve had a busy day on the tools and sometimes you just can’t be bothered to solve a problem. So what do you do?

Ange
What?

Andy 
Yeah, call the boss to get a direct answer, then get back to work doing exactly what the boss told you to do.

Ange
But hang on, you’re a qualified tradie and you should be making those decisions by yourself.

Andy 
Correct. But this dumb ass here, that would be me, thought it’d be really clever to speed up the process by just telling the tradie the answer to their problem every single time.

Ange
But then they don’t learn to make their own decisions or make their own mistakes for that matter and they would get lazy.

Andy 
Yes Ange and guess what? And that’s exactly what they did. Like we had about eight tradies and they’re all calling up with questions every single day throughout the day. They needed to hear my opinion. Yes, I was a bit of a control freak, but come on fellas.

Ange
Yeah, I actually reckon you secretly loved that they always called you, it would’ve made you feel in complete control, maybe even powerful.

Andy 
Yes, just a little. But you know what? That is definitely a fair call and you are right. It did make me feel important, but to be honest, as the business grew and as I got busy doing my own stuff, managing a team of 17, I realized how annoying it was that all the boys were calling me the questions, and I had this aha moment where I said, I don’t want them calling me anymore. These guys are totally capable of making these decisions on their own. They’re qualified tradies. Then it hit me. Guess what everyone? It was a hundred percent my fault. I let them call me. I even coached them that it was okay to give me a call every single time they had a question or something they wanted answered because I would simply give them the answer. I never asked them what they thought. I just gave them the answer every single time.

Ange
Ooh. So how did you fix it so that they stopped calling you?

Andy 
I started by saying, what do you think? They responded with I don’t know. So I said, when you have two suggestions, call me back. Beep, beep, beep. I’d hang up.

Ange
That’s hilarious.

Andy 
Yeah.

Ange
So did they ring back?

Andy 
Yep. Every single time. And they’d tell me, they’re two suggestions. They’re, they’re, I’d say, well, which one of them do you think you should go with? To which I replied, I don’t know, which I then replied, well, call me back when you know which is the better solution, and I’ll hang up again.

Ange
They must have hated you by now. So did they call back again with their suggested solution out of one and two?

Andy 
Yeah, they did. And they started by saying, here’s my two suggestions, but I think we should go with option one because, and then they’d tell me why. And I’d hear ’em out and I’d agree. And then I’d hang up and say, go ahead with that.

Ange
So were they always right with that decision?

Andy 
No, definitely weren’t, but sometimes it wasn’t that they were wrong, it just might have taken a little bit longer, but, If they gave a solution that was a complete flop, then I’d definitely tell them so and explain why and give them an alternative. But I wanted to make sure they were getting some wins as well. So I’d try and turn it into a lesson where they gain confidence to do it on their own, and then next time, instead of having to lean on me, maybe they did it all themselves.

Ange
It sounds like that proverb, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. And if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

Andy 
Yep, exactly. And they needed to stand on their own two feet and back their own decisions.

Ange
Yeah. And stop being so lazy.

Andy 
Yeah, but the reality was I let them be lazy. So I just had to retrain them, go back to the basics and make sure they had the belief in themselves.

Ange
Yeah. I like that story. It’s a good one to help understand what we can do better as business owners to ensure the team does what you want them to do. So let’s twist this a bit and I wanna ask about KPIs, like key performance indicators, cuz this is a great way to elevate their thinking. So these metrics can absolutely make the team aim higher every single day. Can you share your thoughts on that?

Andy 
Yes. Getting the team to be more accountable for their actions is really important. In Dr. Drip, we had a spreadsheet where we recorded each trades person listing each one of their KPIs that they had completed, like inspection reports. We even had like average dollar sales, how many customer reviews, how many quotes they had outstandings, how many quotes they’d won, how many sick days they’d had, how many upsells, and much, much more.

Ange
Yeah. So within an instance, we could understand which of our team were achieving their targets and which weren’t.

Andy 
Yeah, it gives you a very good snapshot of your business so that you can dig a little deeper. For example, we had one tradie whose average dollar sale was just a bit low to pair to everyone else, and when I brought it up with him, he opened up to the fact that he just wasn’t, That confident with communicating with customers, which allowed us in our business to give the opportunity to train him and help him with a little bit of sales training. And for those that did hit their KPIs, we had rewards along the way to make sure we incentivized and make sure they did it time and time again.

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. KPIs is a really good one for you guys to learn for all you listeners, we’ve actually made a KPIs for Tradies template, which is available for free, where you can get it, uh, on our website. Which is lifestyletradie.com.au and just click on the free resources page. It’s called KPIs for tradies. I’ll also drop the link in the show notes. So to add to this, whilst the team loved the rewards, it’s not the only thing that they loved about working with us. I think the fact that we had a really concrete vision and mission helped the team weren’t just tick along in their day-to-day, getting it done, say they actually really enjoyed working with us and the loyal customer base that we had.

Andy 
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, uh, vision and mission statement can really drive the business values home and unite the team towards that one goal. So if you don’t have one of them, it’s a great starting point, or if you do, how are you making it known to your team, um, on a concern basis.

Ange
So maybe you wanna share how you do this in Dr. Drip?

Andy 
Well, we discussed it often in our toolbox meeting. You know, the team was pretty solid about what we wanted to achieve at Dr. Drip, and they were really all on board, which is great. But when it came to their performance to make sure they were on track and felt supported, we regularly had one-on-one meetings to discuss their progress and areas of improvement. You know, I’d take in their KPIs and discuss where they were doing well. And also discussed where I wanted to see a bit more improvement and also asked them how they think we could help them as well.

Ange
Yeah. I think you also used to talk about customer reviews too.

Andy 
Yeah. Plus draw on some feedback from the leading hand and also the rest of the team. Basically the gang that worked together at times and hence had a bit more understanding of their attitude and confidence while on site and, and our meetings were pretty informal, you know, it was, it wasn’t like a review where people expected a pay increase, it was just a gentle chat. Uh, let them know where they could improve and ask them about where we could improve.

Ange
Yeah, I think that’s so important too. Giving them the opportunity to give feedback. It makes it less of a dictatorship and perhaps more of a collaborative effort.

Andy 
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And the team loved our chats. I think because I wasn’t on the road with them and I was based in the office, they didn’t really see me that much. But as the business owner, They’d love the chance to sit down and have a good old chat with me.

Ange
Yeah, for sure. So you mentioned you’d bring up areas of improvement or areas they excelled in. And you already mentioned you gave rewards for meeting KPIs. What would happen if they weren’t meeting expectations? What sort of discipline reaction did you maybe have?

Andy 
Well, if they weren’t meeting the expectations, I had gone to all the effort to train them and give them all the right tools. And if they couldn’t do it after a certain time of effort, you had to consider, are they really the right person for the business? You know, I’ve had tradies in the past working for me each week, and I felt like I was repeating myself, um, with my expectations and how to do things a certain way, and they just weren’t getting it. You know, it was having a flow on effect, not only with our customers, but with the rest of the teams. And sometimes some people just don’t get it. And guess what? You’ve gotta make some hard decisions and just move them on. And I don’t regret ever moving people on out of our business, and I’ve done it quite often.

Ange
Yeah, look, it is a tough decision and ultimately only one you would come to after ensuring you’d done everything to onboard them, right? So that you set them up for success. But ultimately it’s your responsibility to train them and to guide them, right? So not something you should ever take lightly, cuz it can result in a short term loss of money coming into a business, this employment of someone new because one less team member on the road that you can bill out. But looking at the long-term. If they’re just not getting it, perhaps they never will. So you’re right, Andy. Time to chop ’em off.

Andy 
Yeah. Short term. Sometimes it could hurt a little, but if they’re not meeting the KPIs, um, anyway, long term, it’s more of a disaster, not only for you as a business owner, but for your team.

Ange
Yeah, true, true. One last thing I wanna add to this conversation about how to set your team up for accountability success is simply being accountable for your own performance and behavior. Think about how you show up on a daily basis.

Andy 
Yeah, great point, Ange. I think how you act around the team, how you go about achieving your own tasks, motivating yourself, and also striving for goals. As we know, actions are stronger than words.

Ange
Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s a bit of monkey see, monkey do, right?

Andy 
You do and you definitely need to step up as a leader when you’re a business owner.

Ange
Yeah. If you are unmotivated, And you don’t wanna work and you have a general meh attitude about you. Well, why would your team wanna strive for more and work hard when you don’t want to?

Andy 
Yeah. And then to integrate that work hard, play hard culture in the team so that they know, even though they work hard in the day to day. They get to kick back with the team and enjoy the fruits of their labor, you know, outta dinner, heading to the pub, heading to paintball, and doing something like that monthly, quarterly.

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. There’s definitely a major benefit for the team becoming actual friends and just not colleagues. They’ll actually be keen to come to work if they actually like each other.

Andy 
Alright, so what have the takeaways been so far?

Ange
Let’s see. Employ based on attitude, not skillset. Give them systems, processes, like basically a step-by-step as to how they should approach each job like a framework. Spend the time to train your team so that they’re set up for success. Let them fail occasionally. Like they need to be making their own decisions. They need to learn to think for themselves and not lean on you as the boss.

Andy 
Every time. Tick.

Ange
Measure their performance with KPIs, with a reward system.

Andy 
Tick.

Ange
And bring the team together regularly so they become more of a family and not strangers.

Andy 
Tick.

Ange
Hmm. Anything else?

Andy 
No, I think that is about a wrap Ange, and I think you nailed it with everything you said then. So good job. So use our spreadsheet template to implement or even review your own KPIs. You can grab it for free at lifestyletradie.com.au by heading to our free resources section, or click on the link in our show notes.

Ange
Perfect. So this episode has been super fun, but you know what? All good things have to come to an end eventually.

Andy 
That’s not true. But if you’re trying to wrap us up, then all good, we will catch you next week.

Ange
See you then, crew.

Andy 
Subscribe to The Tradie Show, wherever you get your favorite podcast. Rate and write us a review or for more information about Lifestyle Tradie, head to lifestyletradie.com.au.