Look Up

Looking down will cost you.

DON'T LOOK DOWN.

Those words get told to the best downhill skiers in the world. Olympians. Specifically the ones who ski moguls- fast paced freestyle, high risk, huge victories.

But the real coaching is more specific than that. It isn't just don't look down. It's don't look at the bump you are about to hit. Look three or four bumps ahead.

Because where you look is where you go.

Looking ahead will take you ahead. Looking down will not.

Could this not be applied to life and business?

Goal oriented and successful people are always looking ahead and seldom at where they are right now. This place was planned yesterday, or long before. It's a result, not a destination. And one that will take you to the next place.

Knowing where you are is safe, and certainly a good idea. But only for a fleeting moment.

So here's the honest question....what did you look at this very week? Are you catching issues in real time or are you working on your Rocks and annual goals?

You rewrote a line item your estimator already probably had right. You drove to a job your PM has run forty times because you wanted to "put eyes on it." You spent Friday afternoon chasing a $1,400 invoice yourself instead of handing it to the person you pay to chase it. Two hours of your valuable ($300 an hour) time.
Let's do that math.

That $1,400 job had $400 in real COGS. Your two hours cost another $600. You're at a thousand in cost before anything else touches it.

Now put overhead on it. Call it 35%. That's $490. You're at $1,490 on a job that paid $1,400.

You didn't make $400. You lost ninety bucks. And the 30% profit you actually wanted — $420 — never existed at all.

You chased cash and not profit.

Now do it ten more times this year. That's five grand you handed back for the privilege of making a phone call.

Every one of those is a bump right in front of your skis. And every one of them felt like useful work. That's what makes it so hard to see.

Meanwhile nobody looked at the plumber who stopped referring six weeks ago. Or the fact that your plumber sources are among your most expensive and you count on them too much. Nobody looked at the program agreement that renews in the spring. Nobody looked at whether your best technician is three months from leaving and looking on Indeed at lunch.

That's three bumps out. That's where the run is actually won or lost.

Your people don't need to be hawked over. They want you looking ahead.

And here's the part skiers know that owners forget: you don't just lose time when you look down. You fall. Skiers fall when they stand still on steep runs. Momentum is what keeps you upright. Stall out staring at your tips and gravity does the rest.

Same in a restoration company. The stall IS the collapse. It just takes a little longer to show up.

So look ahead. Plan as best you can, but don't linger.

Monday, do this. Pull up your calendar from last week. Go hour by hour and mark every block where you touched something a person on your payroll was already going to handle. Add it up.

That number is your bump count. It's also, almost exactly, the time you did not spend looking three bumps ahead.

Don't look down.

Fall another day. But not today.

-KB

I'd love to work alongside you as an accountability and business coach. Fix and fill the ruts, expand the working operations and put you back where you feel like you have control.

Klark Brown is the founder of Restoration Advisers and the Restoration Business Academy. He works with restoration operators who are done playing small and ready to build something that actually works. Reach out at [email protected] to chat.