Episode 21: Using Systems To Maximise Efficiency With Dennis Wong
In episode 21 of the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, we’re joined by one of the executive business coaches at APB, Dennis Wong. Throughout this episode, Dennis shares the secrets to building a winning team for a building company.
Episode 21: Using Systems To Maximise Efficiency With Dennis Wong
In episode 21 of the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, we’re joined by one of the executive business coaches at APB, Dennis Wong. Throughout this episode, Dennis shares the secrets to building a winning team for a building company.
Show Notes
Transcript
In episode 21 of the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, we’re joined by one of the executive business coaches at APB, Dennis Wong. Throughout this episode, Dennis shares the secrets to building a winning team for a building company.
Dennis works with business owners to grow their businesses, help their managers and team members to achieve higher levels of performance, attain results faster by combining training to impart knowledge, develop new skills, and coaching to facilitate transformative growth.
Dennis has held positions in many fields including accounting, information technology, learning and development, safety and compliance, project management, and human resources.
As a business and executive coach, Dennis graduated from Coach-U in 2016, and FocalPoint Coaching in 2017 and has continued to develop as a professional coach, learning from experts in the field and subsequently, helping business owners, their management, and team members to develop professionally and personally.
In this episode, Dennis shares why it's important for builders to optimise for maximum efficiency, how to overcome blind spots in a building company, the importance of using data to drive decision making and SO much more.
Tune in to the full episode now to learn about the systems that builders can implement to maximise efficiency for their building company.
Dennis Wong - Executive Coach at APB
Based in Sydney, Australia, Dennis Wong is one of the Australasian Executive Business Coaches at the Association of Professional Builders. A Coach-U and FocalPoint Coaching accredited business coach also serving on the Executive Committee of the Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches (APAC), Dennis now works exclusively with owners of residential building companies in Australia and New Zealand that are looking to fast-track their results.
Timeline
1:04 Dennis’s coaching background.
4:32 The challenges Dennis sees builders facing.
5:53 Why it’s important for builders to optimise for maximum efficiency.
8:59 Where to start to maximise your efficiency.
11:52 Metrics to measure efficiency.
13:51 The core blindspots in a building company and how Dennis helps builders overcome them.
15:46 The importance of using data to drive decision making.
16:41 How to stay consistent after improving your efficiency.
18:13 Crucial systems for efficiency.
20:11 Dennis’s advice when it comes to communication with their team members.
21:29 Dennis’s take on the future of the industry.
22:49 What’s surprised Dennis the most about the residential construction industry.
24:15 What Dennis believes builders need to focus on for the future.
25:24 Common challenges Dennis helps builders overcome.
26:38 Dennis’s advice to builders.
30:33 Dennis’s recommended reading.
Links, Resources & More
APB Website
APB on Instagram
APB on Facebook
APB on YouTube
Join the Professional Builders Secrets Facebook group for builders & connect with professional builders world-wide.
Bosco Anthony:
Hello and welcome to the Professional Builders Secrets Podcast, a podcast by the Association of Professional Builders (APB) for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company, from sales processes, financials, operations and marketing. Today I'm joined by Dennis Wong, Executive Business Coach and Mentor for APB.
Bosco Anthony:
Dennis, thanks for being here today.
Dennis Wong:
Hi Bosco. It's an absolute pleasure to be with you as well. Thank you for inviting me.
Bosco Anthony:
Well, Dennis, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with APB. Tell me a little bit about you.
Dennis Wong:
I graduated from university with a degree in business. I majored in accounting and finance. But I like to consider myself a pretty rounded individual, because I worked for over 38 years in a whole range of different roles, everything from accounting to IT, training and development, management consulting, HR compliance and now business coaching. My last full-time role was actually as an operations manager for a commercial builder. I was there for 10 years and that's where I really developed a deeper understanding and appreciation for the construction industry.
Bosco Anthony:
It sounds like you bring a lot of knowledge and experience to the different facets of the construction industry. What compelled you to join APB?
Dennis Wong:
After being in business coaching for a number of years, what attracted me to APB was really the opportunity to combine both coaching and working with people in the construction industry. The other thing was just having access to the whole vast array of training resources and tools that APB developed that my clients could basically utilise from day one, I think was really compelling for me as a business coach.
Bosco Anthony:
What do you love the most about coaching? You're around people, you're talking to people digitally every day as well. What's the one aspect that you really look forward to when you start your day?
Dennis Wong:
You're right about talking to people every day. Coaching has given me a chance to really learn something new every day. That's something – as a coach and as a trainer from years back – that I've always tried to strive for. Continue learning, as they say. When you're talking to builders every day you're learning more about their businesses, a little bit more about them as individuals. It's really interesting to find out what builders do differently to each other in terms of what works and what maybe doesn't.
Dennis Wong:
The learning has added to my personal knowledge space, but the other aspect is I also enjoy working and helping business owners because I not only want to improve their businesses, but at the end of the day, if I can help them improve or make a difference in their lives in a positive way, that's extremely rewarding.
Bosco Anthony:
Give us a snapshot of what a normal day looks like for you. Do you have normal days?
Dennis Wong:
That's always a good question. Typically, I start with a short meeting each day, and whether that's with my immediate manager or we have a team meeting or a meeting across the organisation, then it's pretty much anything can happen. I would actually go to a typical week. My typical week could include a number of coaching sessions with clients. That includes prepping beforehand as well as setting action items for my clients at the end of each session. The rest of my week might involve contacting members of APB who are considering private mentoring, or I'm actually running workshops, strategy sessions and workshops as well during the period. Then of course, there's a bit of admin that you have to do when you're working in any business, and that kind of stuff. It definitely keeps me very busy.
Bosco Anthony:
You deal with so many different builders and you're talking to different builders from around the world as well. I'm sure that there are some common challenges that you've identified or come to terms with. Can you tell us a little bit about some of these pain points that builders face today?
Dennis Wong:
That's a good question, because in working with builders from all over the world, I generally see the same kinds of problems, or as you describe pain points, coming up all the time. They might be things like not closing enough sales, not being able to charge enough on their jobs, adding enough profit margin to their jobs, not having enough good quality leads on a consistent basis. Another one might be not really understanding the financials as well as they would like to, in terms of making good business decisions. Also, the challenge of managing that ideal work life balance. That's a big one for a lot of building owners. It's an industry that creates a lot of stress, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners out there will probably identify with that.
Bosco Anthony:
It sounds like you're alluding to builders and being efficient with their time. And it sounds like what I'm getting here is the theme of efficiency, which seems to be the biggest challenge.
Dennis Wong:
Yeah. I think for a lot of our building members and clients a challenge is that they are generally very time poor. So, if you’re trying to be efficient you need to do more in the time you have available. Or if you choose to actually work less, you have to get the same amount done in less time. So, that's all about efficiency.
Bosco Anthony:
Great. So why is it so important for builders to optimise for that maximum efficiency to grow the business?
Dennis Wong:
It's all about creating output. If you are working really long hours, a lot of building business owners are probably struggling with balancing the amount of work that they are doing when they're working in the business and they really are looking at ways that they can spend more time to look at the business more strategically and more holistically. In order to do that, they need more time. If you're already working from 50 to 80 hours a week, where are you going to find those extra hours? That puts a lot of pressure on them and then their families. So, they need to become more efficient and more effective in what they're currently doing on a day-to-day basis.
Bosco Anthony:
Let's dive a little bit deeper into that. You talked about how they need to be really efficient. Where should builders look to create better efficiencies? You reference time as being the key factor here – are you asking them to record what they do or have a time sheet? Where should builders start when it comes to looking at efficiencies?
Dennis Wong:
That's an excellent question as well. When you look at efficiencies, I think we have to look at it from two different points of view, because one is really at the individual owner level and one is really at the overall business level. So, there are efficiencies at the individual level and efficiencies at the business level.
Dennis Wong:
Now, if you first look at the personal level, I think what you need to really look at is where is it that you're spending most of your time? Are you doing the kinds of tasks and activities that you're not so good at that someone else in the business might actually do better and maybe even faster than you can? You need to consider tasks that are absorbing most of your time and then really look at each task and say, “Is there something I can do to either eliminate that task, or can I automate it or can I actually delegate it to somebody else?” So, those are the avenues that you might take.
Dennis Wong:
Now, on the business side of efficiency, I think pretty much every builder wants to build on time, on budget and at a high quality, because if you can do that, you're going to maximise your profitability. You're going to minimise costly reworks eating into your building schedule, which just delays the completion of a job. So, on that business side you really need to look objectively at the systems and procedures across all areas of the business. That means sales and marketing, construction, HR and financial management, and what you need to do there is to identify where cracks might have formed in the business that are really costing you time and money. Look at ways that you can eliminate them, because in building, time is money. You need to get it right the first time and you don't want to keep going back to a job to rectify defects. Delays in completing a job just reduce your net profit in the job. The idea is you need to get in and get out and move on to the next job as efficiently as you possibly can.
Bosco Anthony:
Is there a podcast blueprint on a process for builders? Can you give me a quick version of what the process looks like when it comes to maximising this efficiency? Where do they start?
Dennis Wong:
The starting point is really doing an audit on their business systems and processes because at the end of the day, until you've got systems and processes in place that are repeatable, you can't really analyse how efficient they are or look at ways to improve them. So, the starting point would very much be that. I think builders should do that audit of their internal processes and see what's actually happening in the business right now, then identify those gaps.
Bosco Anthony:
What you're talking about is analysing the opportunities that may come from that. And then what happens when you start to see those gaps? What do you do next?
Dennis Wong:
The first step is analysing the gaps. The second step is to then start putting together a process or a strategy to minimise the gaps. It's the same strategy again. You're going to eliminate the gap, if you can. You want to automate the process, if you can. Or you want to delegate the process to somebody else, so that you don't need to worry about it.
Bosco Anthony:
Do you follow that order as well, eliminate first and then automate or delegate, or do you go with what works best?
Dennis Wong:
I think that order makes sense, because if you have a problem, if you can eliminate problem then that's the end of the story. You don't need a process to fix it. But if the problem exists and you cannot eliminate it, then the other two options are left. You look at how you can either streamline it and minimise the problem, or can you then pass it on, or literally pass the buck to somebody else to then take care of it.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, as a coach, I'm sure you get a lot of excuses, or you get a lot of reasons as to why people aren't being efficient. What are some of the most common excuses that you may hear? And how do you overcome these excuses, or how do you create that transformation?
Dennis Wong:
That's always a good challenging question. I think for a lot of our clients, the first excuse they normally say is, "Oh, that's the way we've always done things." It's very hard to instil a new process, a new habit. The starting point there is that we really need to change their mindset and we need to help our clients to understand that there is actually a better way of doing things. Just because you did the same thing five years ago doesn't mean that you should just continually blindly repeat the same process. Be open minded and have the mindset that something in the business can always be improved.
Bosco Anthony:
You must look at metrics, so you must look at some form of measurement to tell you if a building company is efficient or is maximising their efficiency. Where do you look? Or what types of metrics or core measurements do you gauge that give you an indication that a business is doing well? What are the levels of performance when it comes to efficiency?
Dennis Wong:
Metrics are obviously a valuable tool to measure efficiency. Depending on what areas of the business that you're trying to measure, you would then come up with a number of different metrics. For example, if I was looking at the construction side of the business, some of the metrics that you could use is to look at the number of defects coming up on a particular job and how much time it's actually costing the business to rectify the defects. Are they spending weeks or even months after the job's been officially handed over still rectifying these minor issues that just drag on? How much cost is the business incurring in rectifying these defects? So, those will be some of the areas that I will look at on the construction side.
Dennis Wong:
In the estimating and the sales side of the business for example, you might want to look at your conversion rate. In other words, how many jobs are you winning? How many jobs are you losing? So, what’s your win-loss ratio? The other thing that might be very efficient in terms of looking at the estimating side is how many contracts versus total contracts submitted are you going through at the moment? Or there is another term that we use, it's called estimating velocity, which is the number of contracts submitted over the working days. That way you can actually measure the efficiency of your estimating staff.
Dennis Wong:
Another metric is handy in terms of overall employee productivity, because we know that construction is quite labour intensive. One of the metrics you can use there is to calculate your average revenue over the total number of hours worked. In other words, you get revenue per hour worked for every member of your building company.
Bosco Anthony:
You must come across a lot of blind spots for builders as well, being a coach. What are some of the most common blind spots or hotspots that builders should be paying attention to? It sounds like financial awareness and metrics are really important, but if you had to rank the top two or three core blind spots, what would they be?
Dennis Wong:
Definitely financials. I think a lot of builders are very skilled craftsmen. They get into the industry because they're passionate about creating and building something from scratch. But nowhere really in the journey did they actually go through any formal training about learning how to be a business person, and financials and numbers are generally not something that a lot of builders are naturally comfortable with. It's something that some have to learn about. I find that probably financials are probably the biggest blind spot in understanding what the numbers tells you about their business and the story and helping to identify potential issues.
Dennis Wong:
The other area I find is that builders can sometimes be a little bit over confident and think they know everything. If you have that kind of mindset then you’re not really going to be open to new ideas or areas for improvement. That can be a major limiting factor for a lot of the business owners.
Bosco Anthony:
It sounds like you’re also trying to help them to get out of their own way. How do you have those conversations? I would assume that’s a pretty difficult conversation to ask a builder to self-assess and get themselves out of their own way and change what they think they know. How do you create that awareness of that ability to recognise that perhaps they need to be doing something different?
Dennis Wong:
I guess, as a coach, that’s where you try to create that aha moment for them. You don’t try to tell them how they should be doing things, but you hope you’d lead them down that journey where they discover and come to that realisation themselves and say, “Oh, I’ve been doing that same thing for the last five years. Now I’ve realised that I can do it completely differently, it’s going to make a huge impact in my business.” And suddenly that becomes important, and that’s their light bulb moment.
Bosco Anthony:
So, you must rely on data then to get to that acknowledgement as well?
Dennis Wong:
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of what we do in our private mentoring program is that we do have to rely on and talk about metrics, the numbers. A lot of what we do is data driven. We rely on evidence that actually shows us what's happening in the business in order to be able to see a measurable progress so that we know that the business is on the right track. If the numbers are not improving, then we need to help the business owners to continually tweak and adjust their plan a little bit to help them look at those improvements. We then track those improvements to confirm that they're actually making good progress.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, Dennis, there's an old saying that says that, "It's easy to get to the top. It's hard to stay there." With optimising for maximum efficiency, what happens when you have taken a business through the efficiency points and they are becoming efficient, how do you keep them consistent?
Dennis Wong:
In most businesses, I think you go through that 80/20 rule. You can get 80% of your improvements with really 20% of the effort, initially. But it's then hard to stay the course and find that last 20% improvement. At that stage you're spending a lot of time and effort, 80% of time and effort, just to get that little extra 20% improvement. I think the same applies for any building business, or pretty much any business in general. The key thing is to build the systems and processes that are going to help the business to be systemised so that it starts to get repeating, and that's where we get the efficiencies from. Like any business, in terms of where the business evolution is, as they become more and more systemised then the opportunities for further improvement start to decrease. I think what you said is quite right, that it's more challenging and takes more work to identify where those extra 20% improvements are going to come from.
Dennis Wong:
We can generally help our clients get up to major improvements very quickly, but it then takes a lot more time and effort to then do that fine tuning and tweaking for those extra improvements at the end.
Bosco Anthony:
You talked about systems and systematisation as well being a crucial factor. Are there any systems that you encourage when you take on a new client? I'm sure APB has a plethora of systems, but what are some of the core tools or resources that every builder should have, or at least should get, when they're starting out?
Dennis Wong:
We generally find a couple of areas that building businesses tend to struggle with are in the marketing area and in sales. There a number of areas that we would then focus a lot of attention on. So how do we improve the sales process? How do we streamline that to make that more efficient? At the end of the day, what you want to do is bring in prospects into your business and convert them into genuine sales as quickly as possible, so you don't have them sitting there in your sales process and stagnating.
Dennis Wong:
So, that's one area that we would focus on. Another area, as I mentioned, is marketing. It’s an area that a lot of business owners are not really familiar with. It's not a space that they're very comfortable with. So, we look at how we can introduce marketing and make it effective, because if you don't understand marketing, you don't know where you're throwing your money; it's like you're just throwing money into the wind. You're not able to really gauge how effective or efficient you're marketing process is. So, having some metrics around your marketing activity is really critical to be able to measure that and to then determine, depending on what your marketing strategy is, each path that you take, whether it’s actually working or not. So, having those metrics around it is important.
Dennis Wong:
The other area for efficiency is really around the organisational structure, managing the teams. If you don't have structure around that, people don't really have a clear idea what their roles and responsibilities are, there are problems with communication among the different levels in the organisation, and then a lot of inefficiencies occur there as well. So, those are probably the three areas that I would generally target with most of my clients.
Bosco Anthony:
What tip or advice would you give a building business owner who's looking to communicate with the team? What's the best? Is there a sequence? Is there a frequency of how often there should be a format or an open format? How should a business owner communicate with their team members?
Dennis Wong:
Well, you can never communicate enough. I think that's the bottom line. I think if you're not communicating with your team even on a daily basis, then you're probably not being as effective as you could be. It doesn't mean that you have to lead every meeting, for example. We're just talking about organisational structure. If the structure is in such a way that there are different levels of management, for example, you should not have to be dealing with everybody, but you can expect one of your line managers to be having those discussions and having regular meetings. But essentially, you should be communicating on a regular basis, and really daily with every team member, and not just assuming and leaving them to their own devices, because everyone needs clear direction and they need support. The only way you can have that is by regular communication.
Bosco Anthony:
So, you don't recommend leaving team members to their own devices.
Dennis Wong:
No, absolutely not.
Bosco Anthony:
Well, let's talk about something different now. Tell me a little bit about your take on the state of the residential and construction industry. What is it evolving to? You are around the front lines, you're around builders. What are some of these critical insights that you're getting from the industry for the future of this industry?
Dennis Wong:
What I'm hearing from a lot of our builders is that a lot of clients that they are working with in the residential building industry are becoming more discerning and they're having higher and higher expectations. The clients that the builders talk to demand quality at a fair price, but they also expect a very high level of professionalism and service from the builders that they're dealing with as well.
Dennis Wong:
In order to be a successful builder you really need to be a professional builder. You need to be more than just a guy who's very good on the tools. You need to be able to talk the talk, walk the walk. You need to be able to communicate very well with your clients. You need to be able to do a bit of selling. You need to understand the marketing process. You need to understand how to actually hire and manage people in the business, and you need to have a good understanding of financials as well. So, you need to be a pretty well-rounded business person these days in order to be successful.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, I'm sure you must have come through some amazing discoveries doing the line of work that you do. I'm just curious as you're coaching different builders from around the world, what has been one of those shocking truths or aha moments for yourself from the intelligence of the construction industry, as well as the builders who you work with? Has there been a defining moment, or moment that really surprised you?
Dennis Wong:
What I've found is the building industry is actually a very tough and competitive industry. A lot of builders work incredibly long hours and it means working in all kinds of environments, rain, hail or shine. They have to deal with challenges like supply issues, deal with staffing and subcontractors, demanding clients, meet tight deadlines. In a financial sense, they're often working without making the ideal margins or as much margin as they would really like. Some of them actually have to deal with quite substantial cashflow issues as well when clients don't pay on time, and that kind of thing.
Dennis Wong:
On the whole, I found that the industry is quite a stressful one and that builders, on the whole, are a very tough and resilient lot in order to be able to put up with all that and to be able to stay in the industry for as long as many of them do. Many of them are in this industry from when they leave school to the time they retire. I would say they must be a very tough lot.
Bosco Anthony:
It sounds like they're going on a journey. Like you said, they get into this industry as craftsmen or tradesmen or women. It's almost like they pick up these business skills along the way. What is your take on what builders need to do to prepare for the future, especially a future of uncertainty? What should be the primary focus for builders out there?
Dennis Wong:
I think builders need to try to be as agile as possible. They do need to keep abreast of what's happening in the industry, because you can't really continue working any industry with your blinders on. You need to be aware of what's constantly happening, and there's always something unexpected that's going to happen. So, it's very important for building owners to be aware of what's happening in the industry and how that's going to impact on their businesses ultimately, and to put themselves in a position where they can then adjust and adapt to the changing environment as rapidly as possible. We often use that term agile, and I think that's a key part of it.
Dennis Wong:
So, business owners have to continually keep an open mind, as I said earlier. They need to be willing to keep learning and look at continually improving the way they do things in the business, and just not accept the status quo.
Bosco Anthony:
You must address a lot of issues around efficiency and optimising for maximum efficiency. Take me through your process of what are some of those common problems that you help resolve in your coaching.
Dennis Wong:
Most of the problems that I deal with on a day-to-day basis pretty much revolve around just four things. It's usually around time, money, people and strategy. When it comes to time, people just don't have enough time. Doing too much, working too many hours. When it comes to money, the problem is not making enough money, whether that's in turning over revenue or not making enough profit. When it comes to people, the problem is hiring the right people and dealing with high staff turnover. Because this industry is quite stressful, staff turnover generally is quite high.
Dennis Wong:
The other side of the coin is how do you then retain the good people that you've got working in the business? As competition for skilled people continues, you have to keep paying more money. How do you compete in that space and then retain the people that you really need? In terms of strategy, a business owner needs to have a business plan in place, which is going to have realistic goals for them, that is setting goals and targets for them to actually hit over the next period, anywhere from 12 months to the next five years.
Bosco Anthony:
What critical advice do you give to a new builder or a builder that isn't a member of APB, or considering joining the membership? What advice do you have for them?
Dennis Wong:
My general advice is don't accept the status quo. Be open minded. Always challenge yourself and aim to do better. An American author by name of James Clear, in a book he wrote called Atomic Habits, talks about continuous improvement. Just imagine, if you can get better by 1% each day for a year, at the end of 12 months you'll actually end up being 37 times better than you were a year ago. So, it's all about consistent, continual improvements, making small changes every day that are going to benefit you and your business in the long term.
Dennis Wong:
For any builder, I think it’s important to be prepared to work on improving the business and to look for those small wins and continued changes, because that's going to have a major impact on the business going forward.
Bosco Anthony:
Is seeing success in this optimisation space really due to personal habits and mindset? How much of that mindset and habits play a role in being a successful building company?
Dennis Wong:
Habits are really key, because we know the definition of insanity: you keep doing the same thing day in, day out and expecting different results tomorrow. That's not going to really happen. So, if you're looking to create efficiencies in the business, you need to do something that's going to be quite dramatic. It means that you've got to shift yourself out of your comfort zone. The only way you can really do that is to start cultivating some new habits, some new daily changes in the way you think, the way you act, or the way you talk. Habits are a key thing in actually being able to move yourself out of your comfort zone and look at things in a different light.
Bosco Anthony:
I always like to get my guests to share some secrets, and secrets is the theme of our podcast. But tell me a little bit about some of the secrets around the successful builders that you're coaching today, because I'm sure that most successful builders have some successful habits. If you can share some of the most common habits that you see as common traits for successful builders, what would they be?
Dennis Wong:
The biggest one is probably discipline, because I think a lot of builders who come to us have all got great intentions. They say, “Oh, we need to learn this. We need to implement that.” But something always gets in the way. Successful clients who are able to break through that barrier are the ones who actually have strong self-discipline. They want something so badly that it becomes their major priority, and because it's a priority, it becomes important to them. They find the time to do that.
Dennis Wong:
So, if it's about learning something, or it's about implementing or planning something in the business that's going to make a change to them in the long term, those people with that sense of self-discipline will somehow make the time to make it happen. Without that self-discipline, I find that other builders will get distracted. They can't keep focused because something else will creep in. It's that phone that rings, and they’ve got to pick up that phone and answer the call, or they've got an email they need to address, or something that just distracts them from the actual direction that they're working towards.
Dennis Wong:
We categorise things into three categories: sand, pebbles and rocks. Sand is the things that are not important. Pebbles are a little bit more important, but the rocks are those critical things that really impact the business in a big way. For the successful business, the big difference is those builders who can see the rocks and get focus and actually spend time on those rocks, because that's going to be the major difference to their business.
Bosco Anthony:
That's a fascinating analogy; I really like that. I'm going to ask you one final question here, because this interview has been insightful. Has there been a book that you've read that has either shaped your career or impacted you to become the successful coach that you are today, looking back at your career?
Dennis Wong:
There are many books that I've read over the years. While we are talking of habits, I think the one that probably sticks in my mind is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. We were just talking about cultivating habits. I think I read somewhere that you can develop a bad habit like eating chocolate within minutes, but there's that 21/90 rule that if you want to develop a new habit it takes 21 days of actual deliberate practice for that to become a habit. It takes time and effort.
Dennis Wong:
So, whether you're going on a diet or trying to go on an exercise regime, it takes time to reprogram your body and mind to the habit. But it really takes you 90 days until it almost becomes completely automatic and part of your lifestyle. From my perspective, when we're talking about changes and looking at improving yourself as an individual, The Power of Habit is a book that I would highly recommend.
Bosco Anthony:
I think habit is a good one to focus on. It sounds like it plays a really crucial role in building maximum efficiency as well. Dennis, I'd really like to thank you for your time today and I appreciate your insights. We look forward to having you back on later episodes as well. And again, thank you for your time and energy.
Dennis Wong:
Thank you very much, Bosco. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Bosco Anthony:
Awesome. We'll look forward to hearing from you soon. Cheers.
Dennis Wong:
Thanks a lot.
Bosco Anthony:
Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your favourite podcast platform, and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at APB can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com. See you next time.