Delegate and Elevate: How to Get More Off Your Plate

Kyle: Before we jump in, a quick shout-out to our friends at BuilderFunnel. If you're trying to grow your remodeling business but feel like you're figuring out marketing as you go, they're building something specifically for you. They're calling it the Remodeler Growth Lab. It's a program built for remodelers who want a clearer path to growth with weekly coaching, proven marketing plays, and a private group of other remodelers who are working through the same marketing challenges you are. If you want better ideas, better systems, and a group of people you can actually learn from, head to builderfunnel.com slash lab L A B to check out the Remodeler Growth Lab. Builderfunnel.com slash lab, check it out and join in on their next. Coaching call. Welcome everybody to the Remodelers on the Rise show. Couple things to kick us off before I tell you more about my guest today. well, no, let me tell you about my guest, Curtis Lawson from the wonderful state of Texas and the greatest city in the state of Texas, Houston. Would you agree with that statement? Greatest city in in Texas?

Curtis Lawson: Absolutely light years better than Dallas.

Kyle: Some people, some people are hanging up this podcast right now, going, These guys are idiots. these Dallas people must be hanging up. But he runs down there a wonderful building remodeling company called Crafted, doing custom homes renovations. He's also wearing his Remodelers on the Rise polo today, because for the last 15 months or so, he has been a peer group coach of his group called Thrive. he's doing a fantastic job there. And we're going to interview today related to this exercise called delegate and elevate. So we're going to get that in a second. but two things I wanted to kick off with. One is these little stickers. Curtis, what is what is what is the sticker? Where did this come from? And what is the purpose of it? It says no for the people

Curtis Lawson: So I got the

Kyle: hang on. The video version people are seeing it. If you're listening to audio, it says no head trash. What is this about?

Curtis Lawson: So I think we all have something in our in in our businesses, in our lives, that we we've always done it a certain way, and maybe it's not working, but we're like, you know, that's the only way to do it. that's the it's the way I've always done it. It's the way it's always been done, Kyle. And that's that's head trash. You know, it's so so is thinking I can't do this. nobody else in my market does this. Nobody else is charging. 40% margin. That's crazy. Builders charge 10% margin. That's head trash, right? Thinking

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: that I'm the only person who can do this in my company, I can't hand that off. That's head trash. So this idea came from a fantastic guy. He's in the Remodelers Community Facebook group, also. His name's Bob Peterson. he is the first the the number two guy this year in NAHB. he's gonna be the number one guy in NHB next year. But he used to be a part of a peer group that I was in and through an HB. And Bob kind of coined this no head trash thing. And he made little nerf footballs that he would throw at us in meetings if we had head trash, and they said no HT on them. and so I did that with my peer group. And then here a few weeks ago I had the idea of just making some stickers for it, and so Through the beauty of Chat GPT, I made a little

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: sticker and given those out to the peer group here in a couple weeks, send them to you, send them to the other coaches. if anybody else wants a sticker or wants the file, shoot me a message, I'll send you one.

Kyle: very nice, very nice. I told I told Curtis, I said,

Curtis Lawson: Empower paper.

Kyle: I said, you can yeah, I would I'd be happy to. because I said, Curtis, you should expense you should expense report this. He's like, No, this is my gift to our our fellow coaches, which is very helpful. So yeah, keep that in mind. That might be your takeaway from listening to this podcast. I bet you you might have some other ones, but be careful with the head trash. So much of your growth as a person, as a business owner. Is going to be having an open mind on changing things, adjusting things. It's so easy to fall into this narrative of like, everybody doesn't like change. Change is so hard, change is this. Well, it's easier for some people than it is for other people. But if you are in a certain position financially or struggling on the sales and marketing side, or struggling on the leadership side, or saying things like, I can't find any good people. As long as you solidify the hold that that narrative and thought has on you, you ain't gonna get any better. It's not gonna get any better. You're gonna get more and more frustrated. No head trash. Stop with that. Be open to new ideas. If somebody else is doing it, it is absolutely possible for you. By the way, remodelers who you and builders who you see and you envy, and you're like, they've got it all figured out. They ain't got it figured out. We all have plenty to improve and plenty to work on. Also, they might be 15 years down the road from you. Where are you going to be in 15 years in your business? Comparison can be the thief of joy. We can have too much head trash and not enough confidence. Be open to ideas. Let this sticker remind you of that. For the first five people who send me an email with a takeaway from today's podcast, I will mail you a beautiful no head trash and I will autograph Curtis Lawson on the back. I will forge his signature. And you'll have your own little forged Curtis Lawson autograph, no head trash. excellent. Thank you for that. And then Curtis, he's just been getting it's like Christmas in September over here for me. Curtis also sent me this. It's an envelope for those of you listening on the podcast, and it has his return address in there and then and then my address. And I opened it up and it said, Kyle, did I fool you into thinking into opening it? I think this is pretty legit service. It looks very, very solidly handwritten. It's got a nice, nice crafted logo on it. And I had posted something in Remodelers Community. If you're not part of that, go to Remodelerscommunity.com and request to join it. It's our free Facebook group. And I posted something about going to my mailbox a couple weeks ago and getting two handwritten notes. And I was excited to open each of them. Handwritten notes have 100% open rates. And in this world of AI, AI, AI, maybe we need to go a little more analog. Maybe we need to kick it a little old school. So he sent this to me and it does look very nicely handwritten, even though it's more of an automated service. What it what's this what's the company that you use for this, Curtis, and and how does it work?

Curtis Lawson: Yeah, it's it's handwritten but on in in written it's W R Y T T E N handwritten. and they are a robotic Card sending service for lack of a better term. So they actually there's a robotic arm that actually holds a real pen and you choose your handwriting and it and it writes the card for you. So you can use those for sending mass you know cards, notes to past customers, clients, whatever. We so we we send them to referral partners, we send them to clients, but you know, you can upload your or just enter your your note on the website, pop in your address book. And boom, it sends them out. And you can even have a gift card inserted as well. So

Kyle: Yes.

Curtis Lawson: I had it give Kyle a Starbucks gift card, which he then gave to Cassie, because

Kyle: I did.

Curtis Lawson: Cassie is on a is on a spending freeze right now on her Starbucks. So she got her Starbucks via my gift card. but yeah, handwritten's a fantastic service. We've been using it for a long time. It's And I I totally agree with Kyle. Like doing an actual handwritten personalized thing is fantastic. We we also still do that. but if you're if you need to send a lot of them and you don't have a lot of time, it's a great way to to to make it look very personal. It fools most people. I've had plenty of clients that have said, Hey, thank you for sending that nice handwritten card.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: That was a lovely gesture. They didn't know. So there go.

Kyle: You're well you're welcome. It was handwritten roboty, but it was yeah, no, so that that works that works great. Long live the handwritten thank you card. It's the little things running a successful remodeling business is about a combination of all those little things. So cool. So that that gets us kicked off. But what we're digging into today is this delegate and elevate. It is an exercise that Curtis has had his Thrive Peer Group go through. And also at the second annual Rise conference that we had back in August, Curtis shared from from the main stage this delegate and elevate exercise and and it's it's always something that resonates. So tell us about kind of where this idea came from, how you've used it, and let's just kind of walk people through the step by step of it in hopes that it helps them improve their life and business.

Curtis Lawson: Well, first of all, it's not my idea. I picked this up through the EOS system. my EOS implementer that that we that we work with, who's who's also one of my business coaches, he introduced this to us. I latched onto it, thought it was a great idea. So it can't it comes from EOS. and the the idea is that if you want to grow your company, if you want to scale, you as the owner cannot do everything, right? The owner tends to be the pinch point, the bottleneck in getting things done. So if nothing can happen without it coming to you first, you're never going to to grow. And the the idea behind delegate and elevate is just a way to analyze everything that you do on a daily basis and then prioritize how you're going to hand those things off to other people. to where eventually you're only doing the key things that truly only you can do, or things that you are the absolute best at that need to remain with you as the owner.

Kyle: Hmm, it's good. I want to riff on EOS just for a minute. If you if you're not familiar with it, yes, you can go get the book Traction. There's there's several different books on the topic. This is also an interesting use of a YouTube video or interesting use of a chat GPT type thing, is to say, hey, I keep hearing about EOS. I'm a business owner that does this. Tell me, tell me about kind of the main concept behind it and thesis behind it. So don't be shy if you've heard EOS and you're still not very familiar with it. Get the Cliff Notes version and then kind of work into it that way. it's been it's there's so many different ways to organize your business and your org chart and your long-term goals and your annual planning. EOS has been one that's very much resonated with a lot of fellow small business owners out there. I've used it, we've used it at Ramalers on the Rise, and we keep kind of adding different layers, whether it be the level 10 meetings, whether it be quarterly rocks, et cetera, et cetera. And then you use this. So before we kind of get into the particulars of this one. What has been just overall as you've approached EOS and your company, what have you kind of what's been really beneficial for you or what's kind of been the most impactful?

Curtis Lawson: The thing about EOS is it's there there's nothing revolutionary in any in any of the individual things that you do. but what it is is it it it brings together all these things that you kind of know you should be doing, it packages them, and then if you kind of follow that system, it's just a way to stay on top of it. So one of

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: the biggest things that I I think is has helped us the most is the meeting rhythm, the meeting structure. So it's it's having good, effective meetings, it's having them on a regular basis, it's having a purpose for those meetings. and so in those meetings, you are you know you're talking about, you know, a set a set agenda every time. You're talking about the things that the goals that you're setting for the company, and you're you're creating action items on what do I need to accomplish those goals. You're talking about how that information's gonna get disseminated to the team. you're looking at scorecards, you're understanding what your KPIs are, and it's it's a way of making sure that everyone on your team is staying plugged into your company's goals, KPIs, and communication structure. And if you if you don't implement anything else from EOS, but you really just focus on that meeting structure, it can have a huge impact on your company.

Kyle: Love it. Love it. So the delegate and elevate is kind of it's got these four quadrants. so there's these four areas. Walk us through that overall and let's just kind of unpack each of them if we could.

Curtis Lawson: Yeah. And I don't know if you're gonna pop pop a graphic on your on your side or not, Kyle, but it's a it's a real simple graphic for delegate and elevate. It's a four quadrant thing. and that that that grid is divided into at the top, the top left, it's things that you love to do and you are great at. The top right is things that you like to do and you're pretty good at, and then on the bottom you're getting into I don't like it, but I am good at it, so I still do it. And then there's the stuff that hey, I hate it and I'm not good at it, and I'm stuck in it. and I see that there you're your screen sharing. Great.

Kyle: Yes.

Curtis Lawson: so those four quadrants represent everything that you do on a daily basis. And the concept is, and you know, obviously this piece of paper is doesn't have a whole lot of room. It's really just to kind of get your mind spinning. A great way to do this is take your phone, create a note on your phone, and just start listing everything that you do on a daily basis, and maybe do it for a couple weeks, or grab a yellow notepad or whatever works for you, but kind of make a list of all the tasks that you do on a daily basis. And I don't mean just owner tasks, I mean like everything that you do. and then after a couple weeks, take those and sort them into the chart. And the ones and and th this chart is gonna help you identify how you're gonna delegate these things. And you're gonna start by identifying, obviously, I hate to do it and I suck at it. All right. Well get it off your plate then. Like don't don't do it. So those are the the really, really easy ones to get rid of, right?

Kyle: Now, for for everybody listening, there's obviously nothing as two business owners that I mean recording a podcast and sharing our advice. So obviously we are pretty much picture perfect out here. So in Curtis and I's case, there's really there might be some things in the don't like, but obviously there's nothing in the don't like not good. We're good at everything. Or that's not the that's not the case, is it? That's not the case, is it, Curtis? Darn it. Who are we to be recording this podcast?

Curtis Lawson: Exactly. on the on the on the handout that that you have, one of the one of the things that I have on there for that category, it's it's also stuff that stuff that drains your energy and that just leaves you feeling frustrated or stuck. Like like you you don't enjoy it, you're not great at it, but you just fight you you feel like you're stuck in it, right? So and they th they just take up your mental space. So that's the stuff that you really need to get off of your plate. The other one on the bottom, the things that you don't like to do it, but you are good at it,

Kyle: Yes.

Curtis Lawson: you know, those are the things that are kind of like the quiet killers. Like you have the skills to do it, maybe you are really good at it. Like for me, an example of that is project planning and estimating. I can do it, I'm good at it, I can knock it out pretty easily, but man, I hate to do it and it sucks my energy and it sucks my happiness, right?

Kyle: Hmm.

Curtis Lawson: So like I know that man, I I I knew that man, I've got to get this off my plate, right? So those two bottom quadrants are really kind of the the the first the first set of things that as you as you grow, as you're looking to think about who do I hire next, or who in my company do do I already have that I can delegate these tasks to. Those bottom two categories are the very first things.

Kyle: Awesome. And Cassie, if you can make a note to put this into the show notes. I bet you if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're watching this on your podcast thing and you go to the show notes, you're gonna see a link that says click here for the delegate and elevate PDF. so if you're listening to this, you want to see that, pull that up. I want to circle back to a couple things. You just gave me the last thing we're gonna talk about. Curtis, we're gonna end this podcast talking about happiness. I have it's my it's been my thought of the day. And then you said something and I was like, just to set the stage, I was using the restroom at church on Sunday, and this guy came up to me and we were talking about happiness. He asked me this weird question. I'll tell you about it at the end of the podcast. but back to where you were going, don't shortcut this. You cannot create your full out list of everything you do in three days. Curtis said, give it a good solid two weeks. Really take your time and jot down all of the different things you do. So take your time on that and then start to put it into the different quadrants. If you shortcut that or you try to do it quickly, you're gonna miss a bunch of stuff. And if you miss a bunch of stuff, you're kind of undercutting some of the wisdom and the good stuff that can come from this. The other thing that I will mention as an aside is one of the most powerful things that I ever did in my business, and I've been in business for over 18 years now, is when I finally wrote out all of the things that I am responsible for in my company. This was probably four or five years ago. Bailey and I were figuring out, okay, are we going to hire somebody new here? What's all the things that Bailey's doing? What can she take off my plate? What can then the next person take off of Bailey's plate? And I remember going through and really taking my time, listing out everything I'm responsible for, and then going, huh. That's why I am running and gunning, feeling frazzled, feeling like I'm behind in this area, feel like I'm killing in this area. It was really powerful to see everything I was responsible for in front of us. And that's what Curtis is basically telling you to do at the start here. okay. So I wanted to get that get that out there. And then the don't like it, not good at it, and the don't like it, good at it. And you list it you listed something.

Curtis Lawson: Well it

Kyle: Go ahead, please.

Curtis Lawson: I'll just say on when you're making that list, go through your phone records as well. Your your your call your call records, go through your text messages, and figure out which of those calls and and text messages could have been somebody other than you.

Kyle: Mm.

Curtis Lawson: It's it's really amazing when you think about how many individual people that you respond to on a daily basis that that you probably didn't need to be in that conversation. If you're the owner of the company and you've got Two or three project managers and a a site super and a leak carpenter. Why is the plumber calling you to ask a question? Why is the electrician calling you to ask where that box is supposed to go? And I promise you, for a lot of you, that's still happening. Like,

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: because maybe maybe you wrote the estimate. And so they think that they they need to call you about that, right? So, you know. Make a list of every text message that's business related, every phone call that's business related, and think about who else should that or could that have gone to and why you you took that call or or or responded to that message. Something amazing happened over the last couple of years with with me. I went, I think, two entire days. And I did not receive a single business phone call or business text message on this thing right here. And it I wasn't on vacation. I was in the office and I did

Kyle: Yeah.

Curtis Lawson: not receive a single phone call or text messages or text message. And it blew my mind. And I was like, Man, I was so productive the last couple of days. Why is that? Well, I wasn't responding to plumber questions and electrician questions

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: and marketing questions because the people who do those jobs We're doing their job.

Kyle: Yeah, a couple things there. One, slowing down enough to analyze the calls and the work that you're doing. And this exercise can help you do that. And just pausing for a second and going, do I have to be the one taking this call? And then head trash. This little head trash is going to pop up, just like the sticker's popping up. And you'd be like, Well, I I need to be the one to do this. And you know, well, they they just want to call me. You don't understand. I've been working with them for 10 years and like I'm the one that they head trash. Are you wanting to continue to be the bottleneck? Do you want to continue to be the one running and gunning? And that's preventing you from spending more time on the business, spending more time on the marketing side or the leadership side or analyzing your financial side. Watch out for that head trash as you go through this list. But there's great power in going, do I need to be the one taking this call? Or to take one example and then rewind it. And you use the example of, well, maybe it's because I was the one doing the estimate. Perhaps. It also could be because you did not do a great job of handing off the project from design development into production. And if we had a stronger handoff between sales and production and more crystal clear communication to our trades, wow, there's there's 20 phone calls in the next four weeks that would be routed to the appropriate person. It would lower the stress, lower the chaos, lower the noise. Ooh, and that's where one piece of this at a time. You start implementing it. That phone didn't stop ringing for you, Curtis, because of one thing you implemented. It was a combination of a lot of different little approaches.

Curtis Lawson: For sure.

Kyle: Wait, what happen wait, wait, what happened on day th wait, what happened on day three? Started erupting again?

Curtis Lawson: you know, I got I got a couple here and there. I I I don't remember exactly

Kyle: Yeah. Right.

Curtis Lawson: what happened, but I I just remember looking at my call

Kyle: Forty eight hours.

Curtis Lawson: history, looking my call history, and the only calls that I had in two days were like my wife and my daughters. And that and that's all that's the only phone calls I had in two days. And I was like, wow, this is life changing. Right.

Kyle: Working. Yes. And by the way, when you d start to delegate some of these things to team members, they grow. They do not grow when you continue to be the one responsible for it or the one that's micromanaging them or the one that's not training them. Your team members grow. They will grow and can do it just as good as you. So we got the don't like it, not good at it, the don't like it good at it. And then the top of the quadrants, like you mentioned, we've got the Love, I love to do this and I'm great at it. And then I've also got the I kind of like to do this and I'm good at it. Talk about those quadrants.

Curtis Lawson: So the so the like it and good at it is probably the hardest one to get rid of because it's it's comfortable. you you you enjoy this stuff, you're pretty good at it, and they may not like get you excited the way the the the the kind of the things in the love and great quadrant get you really excited, but they also don't suck your energy. And

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: so I think a lot of people just th they get rid of the stuff on the bottom too. And they're like, you know what? I mean, I could hand this off, but I kind of like doing it, so I'm gonna stick with it, right? And and that some of that stuff may may be okay, but like if you if if you truly want to to just be able to scale your business, these are the things that are are really essential for handing off. So when you're and and this is this could be a whole other podcast, and we talked about this at the Rise conference about creating a vision for your For your accountability chart, for your org chart, creating a kind of a one, three, five year vision for the future, these are the things that oftentimes you're gonna be handing this stuff off to higher level people. And there it's it's hard stuff to let go of. But if you really want to scale, these are the things that you you have to let go of, right? So you either you either have to let go of this stuff or you're like, you know what, I love this thing so much. I'm gonna bump this into that love quadrant. I'm just gonna keep it. But you can't keep too many things there, right? Like, because

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: there's only so much bandwidth that you have. So these things in the like it good at it quadrant are the hardest things, I think, to get rid of. Because I think once you get past this and you're kind of in that love it and I'm great at it category, you're so in tune with this whole process. You're like, yeah, I'm excited to give that one away. yeah, I'm excited to give to get that

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: off my plate. Let's just do it, right? So If if if you can master getting rid of these like it, good at it tasks, you're gonna be so far down the road, you're you're gonna be you're gonna be scaling, you're gonna be winning.

Kyle: Hey, quick question. When you're trying to figure out what's actually working in your remodeling business, who are you talking to? BuilderFunnel created the Remodeler Growth Lab to give remodelers a place to work through those questions with people who actually get it. You'll get access to BuilderFunnel experts, weekly coaching, and proven marketing plays you can put to work in your business. It's built to help you stop guessing with your marketing. and to figure out what's holding back your growth and learn from experts that have already done it. Head to builderfunnel dot com slash lab to learn more and join the next coaching call. I like it. So the as we we get the list, we put them in these quadrants. just kind of a reminder, and the document kind of shared this. place every item in the four quadrants. This should help you understand where you are wasting your most precious resource, your time. And even that I think is kind of can be fresh for us of going, let's again, we're slowing down. We're actually evaluating our overall capacity that we have. We are trying to get out of superhero mode where I just keep throwing things at me. I can do more and more and more. I over the last six plus months, I've been more ticked off about my inbox than the previous six years. I'm like, when is it going to change that I can manage this differently? Where I don't feel at the end of the day like if I didn't just pound against it, it it it it didn't go anywhere. Like I get to the end of the day and it's like, my inbox is filled back up again. Well, wouldn't you know it? The more I get ticked about it, the more I'm paying attention to it, the more I'm measuring it, the quieter it gets. I unsubscribe from pretty much everything. We talk as a team about if I need to be copied on certain things. There's just a lot of strategies involved there. so as you as you think about your time, be realistic about your capacity. If it's sneaking over into the early morning hours, into the evening hours, what are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna delegate? What are you going to identify? And also. This has been a a little bit of a talking point the last few weeks. Do you actually believe that your business and that your workload can actually change? Busy business owner who's been running and gunning for the last 10 years straight, who's getting a little burnout from it. Do you actually believe that it can change? And if you do actually believe it can change, this exercise of identifying it all, identifying the first thing and the next thing that you can delegate is the first step towards building. your position around your life, not the other way around. Aren't you sick of your stinking business controlling too much of your life? Do something about it. And this can help. This can help. It's absolutely possible.

Curtis Lawson: Well and and and did you did you start your business to work fifty or sixty hours a week? Isn't isn't

Kyle: Mm.

Curtis Lawson: isn't kind of one of the points of owning your own business to be able to kind of set your own hours and and have a better work life balance or you know or or or or work less? Isn't isn't that all of our shouldn't that be all of our long term goal? You know, many people were working for another company, working for the man, working fifty, sixty hours a week, and they're like, you know what? Forget this, I'm gonna start my own thing.

Kyle: I feel I feel like we should sing some feel like we should sing some Dolly in honor of Dolly. Working nine nine two five,

Curtis Lawson: Working nine till five.

Kyle: what a way to make living. Dolly,

Curtis Lawson: Yeah.

Kyle: what a what a national treasure she was. Working for the man, carry on, stay focused.

Curtis Lawson: But you know, yeah, so so are are are are you doing this so that you can work fifty or sixty hours a week? Or are you doing this so that you can enjoy your life more, enjoy your family more? I I mean, I I'm I'm not I'm not saying this to to brag at all, but I mean I'm I'm very happy that I'm probably in the office twenty-five hours a week.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: And I'm I'm I'm really, really happy with that. I mean, that's that's not counting all the the grueling hours that Kyle makes me spend coaching, but on crafted, I'm spending about 25 hours a week.

Kyle: Yeah. Right. And that take and so it's it's doable. It's possible. And early on in the business, if you're listening to this and you're like, guys, this is great. I don't even have a team around me. It's it's piece by piece. You find that first part-time bookkeeper, you find that virtual assistant, you're finally able to hire your first lead carpenter, take some of the swinging the hammer responsibilities. There's just always next right things. And then some of you listening to this are running a six million dollar company and you're still very involved in it. This type of exercise can start to alleviate that as well. so give us a couple tips on just okay, once we identify it, what are some best practices that you've found as far as effectively handing some of this off and delegating some of these items?

Curtis Lawson: I think it all starts with two things. It's the the the accountability chart, the org chart, and then job descriptions. If you don't have those two things and you don't know where these responsibilities should or could live, then you're kind of struggling to know where where they need to go. So to me, this exercise goes along with the organization analysis and kind of creating a good org chart accountability chart. But you know, using those tools, you can you can say, okay, I am doing I'm I'm making these the these these phone calls to the plumber, these text messages with the plumber, the electrician, that needs to go to the project manager. That needs to go to the lead carpenter. And that's that's low hanging fruit, right? That's an easy

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: one. or so like like the estimating for me, right? I did not have a kind of pre construction estimating. department, so to speak, or a person in that role. So I said, okay, based on our growth and our future org charts that we built, this is the next person that we need to hire to get this off of our plate, right? So by by using delegate and elevate in combination with those other tools, it becomes very apparent on where these things need to shift to. That also means means that you need to kind of constantly update your job descriptions for each of your positions. And as a the quick tangent, if you don't have job descriptions for your entire staff, you need to, because those people need clarity on what their roles and responsibilities are. One of the one of the biggest struggles that we had to overcome, I'll say about five years ago, was people were like, Curtis, like, you know, I I'm not clear on are they doing this or am I doing this? And you keep throwing things at me, but that's not really in my job, right? And so I had to get really clear on writing a job description for every single person on staff, having that tie to the org chart. And then, man, once you once you have that, you can really start just shuffling these things around and and and visualize it. a great way to do this. I I'm I'm I'm very analog in a lot of ways. I love kind of the the tactile thing of of writing it down on at on a sticky note and then moving those sticky notes around a big chart, right? So we get a a giant piece of plotter paper from our plotter, you know, 20 or 36 by 48, let's say, make a whole bunch of sticky notes, and then take those things and just move them onto the different roles and responsibilities on the chart. It's it's kind of a a

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: physical org chart that we used before we created our digital version. And do it with your team too. So I don't don't do all this by yourself because your team can also help you say, you know what, that's that task may not be a great fit for Becky, but it might be a great fit for Jana. Be and here's why, right? They're gonna have a different perspective on why some of those tasks might go to a different person than what you have in your head. But I like the the experience of rolling that thing out on the conference table. Have a million sticky notes and then just start shuffling them around. It's a really cool,

Kyle: Yeah, it's good.

Curtis Lawson: cool, fun exercise.

Kyle: That's good on the it's good on the business work. Did you say Jana? I don't know if I've ever heard of the name Jana. Yeah, you pulled out of the air. I'm

Curtis Lawson: I just pull those out of the air. I I don't have a Becky origin.

Kyle: thinking they were I thought maybe they were like a like, you know, middle school girlfriends or somebody had a crush on back in the day. And that's why I was going down that route.

Curtis Lawson: No, neither one of those.

Kyle: Who's your first girlfriend?

Curtis Lawson: Man. Courtney.

Kyle: What's Courtney doing these days? I don't either. Yeah.

Curtis Lawson: No idea. Living her best life somewhere.

Kyle: Yeah. My first crush was was Jessica Brown. It was when we had like ICQ instant messenger. It was the first time we had that. And I would fire up the dial up and and chit chat, chit chat with Jessica. And then I remember in seventh grade, Michelle Pasternak and I evidently were kind of dating at the end of the year. And then we hadn't talked all of June, all of July. And then I think she randomly called me. We had this thing called a dial up phone back in the day in the 90s. And I remember calling, my mom was like, Michelle is on the phone. And I was my heart's a thumping. What's going on here? So, Kyle, I don't think we should be boyfriend and girlfriend again. I'm like, Okay, cool. Like, were we boyfriend and girlfriend? I don't know. So, shout out to Courtney, shout out to Jana, wherever that one came from. and that's all we have to say about that. good. Curtis, I think I think we gave them clarity around how to approach this. They can see in the show notes the delegate and elevate exercise. This is on the business work. This is good. Shut things off. Go into what I like to call cocoon mode. Put your phone in, do not disturb, bring the team around, spend an hour thinking through this. One other one other little thing as you as you look at your different roles and responsibilities, try to apply a little bit of percentages next to certain ones. Okay, yes, you have these, but you know, those five things are are the core of what you do. That's about 70% of what you do. Sometimes seeing the hours per week or even the percentage of your overall time helps you see some areas where you can start to shift some things. And and again, it's absolutely doable. do you have one more quick thing related to delegate and elevate before we close out this podcast?

Curtis Lawson: Well, I think I think two things. people will surprise you with what they are able to do. Right. I think sometimes

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: we have this head trash of nobody else can do this as good as I can. People will surprise you when you hand tasks off. They will oftentimes exceed your expectations. And they may not th if in fact they probably won't do it the same way that you do it. now, certain things you need to write a procedure for, right? If it

Kyle: Yes.

Curtis Lawson: if it is a if it is an essential task that you that needs to be done a certain way, create an SOP and make sure they're doing it the way it needs to be done, right? There are other things that can be left to the person to to make some decisions on their own and and use their own thought processes. And on those things, I think people will often surprise you with with how they come up with solutions. So that's one thing. The other side of this is, or the other question we get is okay, I hand it off and they're not doing a good job. What do I do? Right? So you need to have a feedback loop in place. you need to have you know, this is part of that EOS meeting structure, right? So you're holding them accountable. Here's the task that you're supposed to do. Here's the SOP that we gave you on how you need to do it. And and and and through our meeting structure, through our one-on-one meeting structure, through our group meeting structure, here's how we're following up to make sure that is actually getting done the way it's supposed to be

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: done. And if it's not, here's the corrective action. So you need to have that feedback, the expectations and the the accountability in place

Kyle: Yes.

Curtis Lawson: at the same time you're handing these off.

Kyle: Yes. And leadership is hard because it's just hard. And the way that each person's unique in that way, another way of kind of looking at it would be this learning quadrant of hey, this is a task that we want to hand off, but I'm gonna do it, you're gonna watch me. Just watch that. Now I'm gonna do it, you're gonna help me. Now you're gonna do it and I'm gonna help. And then you're just gonna do it and I'm going to go play golf or

Curtis Lawson: Yeah.

Kyle: whatever. Right. So that's that's part of

Curtis Lawson: So I I learned

Kyle: what you're saying too, is just like sometimes this delegating thing can happen real quick. Okay, done. Don't even think about it. Most of this stuff is going to require some some feedback loops, some checking in on, some KPIs, and then just slowing that down a little bit. Patience there.

Curtis Lawson: Yeah. So the I call that or I I I call it and I didn't coin this phrase, but it's the show tell do model. So

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Curtis Lawson: when you're teaching a skill, I actually learned this in Boy Scouts when I was in middle school or high school, my scoutmaster was Yeah.

Kyle: Yeah, you were dating co you were dating Courtney back then.

Curtis Lawson: My scoutmaster was really big on this. If you're teaching somebody a skill, there's three s there's three steps. There's show, tell, do. And he the way he put it was also You tell them what you're gonna tell them, you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them. Right? So you it's it's three it's three steps of reinforcement. I'm gonna show you how to do it, I'm gonna tell you how to do it, and then I'm gonna watch you do it, I'm gonna give you feedback. So that that that that kind of that three-step

Kyle: Yeah.

Curtis Lawson: teaching process is really important when you're when you're handing things off.

Kyle: Nice, but yeah, when you're delegating. I think oftentimes I'll raise my hand like we're we're too quick with that. Slow down in that. That's where patience and take some time because you know that transition taking maybe a few months to make happen is still in the big picture, going to make such an incredible impact on your workload, bottlenecks, your ability to grow, and hopefully also the enjoyment of your team with them taking on something new. all right, a couple things to wrap us up. Number one, thank you very much. That was very helpful. And I think we delivered some value to the people. Thank you very much.

Curtis Lawson: I hope so.

Kyle: number two, Boy Scouts. I was in Boy Scouts as well. It was interesting. Boy Scouts was the first time in my life that I finally had to look at the everything that I was involved in and had to say no. I got to I got up to life, which I think is two away from Eagle Scout. And it was eighth grade or so. And I was in track, I was in band, I was in doing this, I was working at the golf course. And I remember it, I just like a vivid core memory of like, holy cow, I'm going to quit Boy Scout. I've been doing this for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and this and that. And my cousin was an Eagle Scout and he did his big project. And it was it was interesting. I just vividly remember that. I don't have regrets necessarily about it because it was like, look, there's only so many nights in a week. But we need we all need to evaluate just our overall workload. Sometimes we need to say no to something that's really life-giving because we need to focus more on the business side. Sometimes we need to say My stinking computer is closing at 4 30 today. And I'm gonna go and I'm going to wine and dine my wife tonight, or I'm going to spend quality time, like real quality time with with my kid tonight. So that's a challenge in life, and especially as business owners. Our workload will never end. We have to be careful with choosing what we're going to do. And this delegate and elevate can be a huge help with that. I also remember it being like negative 20 degrees and we did lean twos. some core memories of camping out there. so finish we'll finish off with the with the happiness thing. I was I was at church on Sunday and it was choir kickoff. The choir sang. What they sing, I'll give you guesses. a ma one we've never heard of Amazing Grace, but it was kind of a funky one that my wife picked. She's the choir director and the worship director of church. so I was getting my tenor voice ready and just using the restroom facilities before before the first service. And kind of a buddy buddy of mine walked in and said, Hey, hey. He's definitely a a urinal talker. Like we have to evaluate that of like some guys don't want to talk when we're sitting in there. Like you can talk when we wash hands, but like leave me alone over there. Yeah, that's not how Joe rolls, and generally not how I roll. And I took care of my business, he took care of his business, and we're we're washing hands. and he goes, You happy today? And it just like stopped me in my tracks a little bit of like, huh. Am I happy today? And I've just been thinking about that every day this week and just thinking about am I happy overall? you know, what is what I'm doing, is the work-life balance, is the things that interest me, is the work I'm doing in my business. And there's some areas where I'm like, yeah, it's kind of in that don't, you know, kind of like it and I'm good at it, but I don't love it. There's some things in the I don't like it, but I'm good at it. Evaluate just even holistically, like take a look at that. Are you happy? Is what you've built and what you've designed and how you're spending your time and how life is playing out. Are you happy with it? If not, what are you gonna do about it? And yes, we talked about on the business side, but I would encourage you to also apply a little bit of this to your overall work life. You happy? If not, why? Is it because you're eating like an absolute hog and you are lethargic and you're carrying an extra 25 pounds and your body's aching more because you're in your late 40s and now you're like, I think I just called somebody out, by the way. Somebody, whoever that was. No, not you. But whoever no, you've been, you've you've worked hard on that. you know, whoever that is. But like, are you happy? If not, why? It's not because life, the whole point of life is just to make me happy. Frankly, life is better when we're serving others, but it's a it's a question you you mentioned happiness earlier, and it's just been something I've been pondering. I think it's good for all of us to just spend a little time thinking about that this week. Curtis, what are you gonna leave the people with? Final thought.

Curtis Lawson: I mean, that's one of the best parts about delegate and elevate is you're you're getting rid of the things that suck your energy, that drain your that drain your energy, that take your take your happiness, and you're focusing on the things that you are truly good at, that you love doing, that give you energy. and and then at the same time you're you're creating more space in your life, which we all need more space in our lives.

Kyle: Beautiful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for wearing the Remollers on the Rise shirt. Thank you for changing the color behind his video. People, 5P, proper preparation prevents poor performance. He matched the red with the logo. it's about doing the little things. Attention to detail. By the way, if you kind of think of yourself as a perfectionist, we need to get we need to not be perfectionists. Perfectionists are usually not super happy. Speaking of happiness, they could drive you nuts. We can be excellent at what we do and not be perfect. Especially in the remote remodeling is a great place to not worry about being perfect. be excellent, but don't be perfect. All right. Until next time, folks. Curtis, have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you. Talk to you all soon.

Curtis Lawson: Thank you all.

Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.