Hand Over the Bloody Phone or Get Out of the Cab

There are only 24 hours in a day. No more are coming.

Yet some contracting business owners are still trying to fit 37 hours into them. 

That works when you are starting out. But once you have five to ten staff, if every decision still runs through you, the problem is no longer the staff, the weather, the customers, or the season.

It is you. You are a maniac with mobile plan.

The $45/Hour Cab Trap

The phone is the villain here. It sits in your pocket pretending to be useful, while irritatingly turning you into the control tower for the whole business.

Customers ring you. Staff ring you. The office rings you. The mechanic rings you. Someone wants to know where to go next. Someone else wants to know what was agreed with the farmer.

Because you keep answering, everyone keeps ringing.

Then you complain nobody thinks for themselves.

Of course they don’t, you trained them not to. Perhaps you don’t want them to?

Look at the math. You might be sitting in the seat of a $700,000 chopper, a direct drill, a sprayer, a baler, or a truck, feeling productive because the diesel is burning and the hectares are ticking over.

In reality, you might be doing a job you could pay a good operator $45 an hour to do.

Meanwhile, nobody is locking in next season’s feed trading contracts. Nobody is looking at which machine is costing too much in maintenance to keep in the fleet. Nobody is checking why invoicing is still lagging or chasing overdue invoices.

You are doing the work you know, because it feels useful.

But the business may need you somewhere else.

Camp One: Stay in the Cab

Fine.

Plenty of owners want to keep operating. Some enjoy it. Some believe the only way to keep staff accountable is to work alongside them and keep standards up in the field. They are worried staff will miscalculate the rate, miss a mechanical fault, or make a call they would not have made.

Fair enough.

But if you stay in the cab, hand over the bloody phone.

Someone else needs to start taking customer calls, scheduling jobs, handling changes, and dealing with the day-to-day noise. You cannot be giving 100% attention to negotiating a feed supply contract WHILE simultaneously firing grass into a truck and trailer unit driving along next to you….(well…I am sure some of you can and do!)

Do it in stages if you need to.

Start with new customers. From now on, any new customers do not ring you first, they ring an ops manager. Then over time, older customers get shifted away from defaulting to you.

If you want to keep your hands on the wheel with maximum efficiency, you need to get the business out of your pocket.

Camp Two: Run the Business

Also fine.

But then get out of the cab and put a proper manager in the field.

Not a pretend 2IC. Not someone with a title and no authority. A real one.

This person/people need authority. They need to direct staff, make calls in the field when the weather turns, hold operators to your standards, and own outcomes without you hovering over them.

Yes, they will make mistakes.

They might misjudge a crop, they might make a call you would not have made.

That is how people learn.

If you never give them space to fail, they will never develop the ability to lead.

The Cost of Deciding to Continue to do Both

I have seen this play out in multi-generational businesses.

Good name. Good gear. Good staff.

But stuck at the same size for years because the owner cannot let go.

Every quiet season, the promises come out.

“This year we’ll put better systems in.”

“This year you’ll get more responsibility.”

“This year I’ll step back a bit and focus on pricing, customers, systems, and next season.”

Then the season starts, the pressure mounts, the phone stays in the owner’s pocket, every decision still runs through him, and the good senior staff slowly lose faith.

Eventually they stop desiring more, or worse, your best operators leave and become the competition.

Can you really go through the same shit for another five seasons?

Same calls. Same interruptions. Same late nights. Same promises. Carrying everything on your shoulders?

Pick your camp.

Stay in the cab and hand over the phone.

Or get out of the cab and give someone real authority.

Just do not keep doing both if you want to scale.