It’s finally Friday! Today we recap the week, and talk about managing expectations. No. That’s it, that’s the sentence, and sometimes you need to say it. There is only so much time in a day and so much that you are capable of. Reminding yourself of that and communicating that clearly to your clients can save lots of headaches down the road. Check out the website for more content www.bcbousa.com
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Full Recap:
Hello and welcome to BCBO Daily. It is Friday, finally Friday May 14th and I am your host Dan Murch. If I sound a little tired today it is because yesterday was a 16 round boxing match. They don’t even have 16 round boxing matches anymore, but yesterday was one of those and I took some punches. It was a doozy of a Thursday, but I got a lot of stuff done so it was very rewarding. It was one of those nights where I had to think really hard about the good things that happened in the day. Not because a lot of things went bad, but because my brain was jello so it was hard to think in general. But I did it. I thought back on all the good things that happened throughout the day and tried to appreciate those successes. It was a good day.
Friday is shaping up to be a good day. I have a lot of cool things going on, I have a couple appointments on my agenda that are of the big picture variety and exciting for the future of the company. So I’m really looking forward to it. As we do every Friday, let’s make sure we take some time today to set ourselves up for success for next week. Let’s go over our calendars, our reminder list, reviewed everything that happened this week and tackled everything that we decided was a priority. Let’s be set up and ready to go and put ourselves in a position to succeed.
That’s what I want to talk about today. Not scheduling, that is something we have gone over in the past and I am sure we will again in the future. Putting ourselves in a position to succeed, and part of doing that is managing expectations in both your personal life and professional life. Managing expectations both for ourselves personally and for our clients. There is only so much time in a day. You only have so many employees or subcontractors working for you. There is only so much you can get done in any given day. There is only so much that you are physically capable of doing.
Understanding that and then talking honestly and clearly to your clients and to yourself about those things is a good thing to do. You need to manage the expectations of what you are actually able to accomplish. A really simple example is from a personal standpoint, say you are not the type of person who exercises and runs and trains and then decides one day that you are going to go run 10 miles. No training, just walk out the door and do it. Chances are you are not going to do it. You are just setting yourself up for failure right from the get go. You are setting yourself up to possibly get physically injured, and you are setting yourself up to be disappointed in yourself for not achieving your goal. You didn’t set the right expectation for what you are trained to do and what you are capable of doing.
When it comes to your business, if you are not being honest and clear with your customers about what you can and can’t do on a particular day or can and can’t do on your schedule for starting and completing jobs then you are setting yourself up for failure. As we have talked about in the past, sometimes no is a complete sentence. No. That’s it. That’s the sentence. If someone says are you available to come out and look at this job. I need you to look at it today, start tomorrow, and complete it by Saturday. Can you get that done? NO. I cannot get that done. Here is what I can do…. And then you tell them what can actually be done.
If you are constantly saying yes to everyone and everything, what you are going to have at the end is frustrated and upset customers. You are not managing the expectations. You are not being realistic about what can and cannot be done, and you are setting people up to be angry at the end when you don’t meet their expectations. You are going to create a bad reputation for yourself. You are going to feel bad because you feel like you are failing. You are going to have frustrated employees. It all comes back to the beginning.
It is so much easier in the beginning to be honest and give the clients accurate information. Sometimes they don’t want to hear, but you would be surprised that most of the time they appreciate honesty. You just have to say “Listen, this is my schedule – I can’t start for 2 (4,6) weeks, but when we do I promise we will not pull off the job until it is done, and I promise you will get the level of service that you expect from us. There is no way for us to start any sooner. We already have commitments elsewhere and it is simply not possible.” Now you have managed expectations. Now the customer can decide. They can say they appreciate our honesty, but they have to go with somebody else, or they can say they appreciate our honesty and they are willing to wait for us.
Now, if they go with somebody else I understand the frustration of losing the job, but saying yes would have only put you in a position to upset multiple customers. If you squeezed that job in you would probably have to do with less man-power than required, rushed through it, and probably took employees off another job that they were committed to. Now you have two jobs that are being poorly run and two customers who will be upset with the quality of the work and chances are you will not complete either job in the expected time frame anyway since you are doing both shorthanded. Now you have the potential to lose two customers because they think the quality of your work is not good enough and you can’t follow through on promises you make.
On the other hand maybe they didn’t use us this time, but they appreciated the honesty and they will come back to us next time. It happens. Being dishonest and not managing the expectations properly is just setting yourself up for failure down the road. For your client and for yourself please be honest with yourself about what you can and can’t handle. How much time you have available in your day and in your week.
Do the same thing in your personal life. When we talk about setting goals, creating good habits, and pulling ourselves towards our long term goals, let’s make sure we are setting realistic goals and expectations. You don’t want your goals to be so easy that there is no challenge at all. Patting yourself on the back for brushing your teeth isn’t necessary – it’s just part of living life, but you also don’t want to set goals that are not realistic and you have no chance of reaching. You need to find that sweet spot.
That’s what I wanted to hammer home today. It is something that came up yesterday with a couple of clients. It creates a lot of frustration and anger that can be avoided just by having clear, concise communication up front. Please make sure you are doing that.
That’s it guys. That’s our Friday. That’s our week. Has been a great week, very busy, very hectic, some ups, some downs, but we got through it. We are going to finish strong and then go enjoy ourselves this weekend. I hope everyone has a great weekend planned. I have a lot of relaxing on my agenda, I have a great weather forecast, and I am very much looking forward to it.
We still have Friday to get through, so let’s do it people. Let’s jump in with both feet and pay the rent on our success. Let’s finish strong. Let’s keep asking ourselves that question – How would the person I want be handle the thing I am about to do? Let’s keep putting ourselves in that forward thinking mindset. Keep pulling ourselves forward towards our goals and our vision.
It happened everyday this week, and it is going to happen today – things aren’t always going to go as planned. Let’s be kind to ourselves. It is going to be ok. We are going to figure it out. Let’s limit the negative self-talk. At the end of the day, even if your brain is jello like mine was last night, let’s take the time to seek out and celebrate our successes. We are good people. We are working hard. We deserve to be happy and deserve the good things in life. So make sure we are not only making adjustments where we need to, but celebrating ourselves also.
Lastly, as always, go check out the website bcbousa.com. That is where you can get all the good good. That’s it people. I hope everyone has a great Friday and a great weekend and I’ll be back on Monday. Thank you for your time. Have a great day. Bye.