Is Doesn’t Get Much More Fun Than This!

Just got back from a great trip to a client’s office. I LOVE days like we had together.

As we worked through my client’s numbers, explored the way he goes about his business, and tossed around opportunities, it became crystal clear that he had an opportunity to quadruple his net income fairly easily in 2009. He was sitting on so much untapped capacity and potential.

His production numbers, crew and equipment arrangement, competitive position, and staff capabilities all point to an explosive performance in the upcoming year – even using fairly conservative assumptions.

Guy has also run into the very same situation several times when starting with a new client. Guy has helped drive the sudden growth of several companies that were in the described position.

His client would have been doing many things right, would have built a highly capable team, would have had pretty much bought the right equipment, but just wasn’t really tapping it for all it was worth. The ring was there for the taking if only the owner would focus on the right activities, manage his time wisely, and stay committed to a couple of stretch goals.

Is this happening in your construction business? Are you sitting on a massive income potential if only you would focus on the right things and really work hard on them?

Here’s how you can tell.

Determine how much work your crews could perform if you could keep them busy. Now, figure out how much of their time you would sell by blowing off unattractive leads and started pursuing only high quality leads. Then, determine the strength of your competition. Does anyone really own your target clientele?

If you believe your core clientele isn’t really well served by anyone yet and your team has the ability to do so, then you also are sitting on an untapped mountain of opportunity.

Hopefully, that’s what you’ll discover!

Best wishes for your business.

Your friends,

Ron & Guy

The Contractor’s  Business Coach

Are you like most of adults who wish they had followed more of their parents’ advice?

It’s usually “Dang. Dad was right about that.”

That’s really a hard part of growing up. Accepting that we can learn from others’ mistakes, especially our parents’.

And note that I said mistakes, not successes.

Let’s face it, everyone learns best from mistakes, whether our own or someone else’s.

Yet, we all try to pattern success. Why is it so hard to pattern success? Why is it so hard to replicate another contractor’s approach?

Well, the approach we are trying to following almost always resulted from the combination of many factors coming together almost magically. Typically, our situation is different enough that the EXACT same approach will not work for us.

You have noticed that, right? No matter how much you try to follow the approach of a contractor peer, you rarely get the same results?

So, who should you turn to when trying to fix a problem that is (1) costing you money, (2) distracting you from the core tasks of growing your business, and (3) you’ve tried to solve multiple times unsuccessfully?

A. Yourself?

B. Your peers?

C. A professional?

The proper choice depends on your situation…but rarely is “A” the easiest choice.

Not to say you will not eventually solve the problem by yourself, but it may cost you a lot of money and headache along the way just for the benefit of “saving face.”

Choice “B” has worked well for many contractors when they could find someone in their trade who serves the same type of customers, is willing to truly share their secrets, and truly understands why their approach worked and how to adapt it to other situations. Peers who meet all three conditions are very hard to find.

Choice “C” is, quite honestly, the easiest path.

Find a professional who knows which basic solution will work best in your company and who knows how to customize the solution for your exact situation (including customer tendencies, employee personalities, and your personal skills and makeup).

Most consultants who have been around for awhile, have rolled out their solutions into several firms and have learned what works and what doesn’t work…and why.

So, if you are struggling to grow your business and continuing to fight the same fires, which path are you going to choose?

The easy way or the hard way?

Until we next chat – best of luck with your business,

Ron Roberts,
The Contractor’s Business Coach

Recently, while trying to explain what my client and I had already achieved together and why we were getting ready to focus on something that didn’t appear to be a pressing need, I stumbled upon a concept that you might find helpful with your business.

What I knew, and my client was about to find out, was that despite having a six month backlog of work he didn’t have any systems in place to ensure that he would have plenty of work at the end of the six months.  He didn’t understand why it was so important to address the situation now.

After stumbling around making various points and observations, it finally dawned on me that his business was straddling two different plateaus of performance and neither where the plateaus we are gunning for.  I hopped over to the whiteboard and drew a little chart that showed the four possible stages of business.

1. The Threat Stage

2. The Stability Stage

3. The Freedom Stage

4. The Great Wealth Stage

A business will never reach the Freedom Stage while still facing serious threats. Another way of saying it is that a business must be fully stabilized before freedom is possible.

Proven systems are what bring stability and eliminate threats.

In my client’s case, we had just put the finishing touches on his operations management to reduce the odds of blown budgets and negative surprises.  So we had stabilized his operations.

What we hadn’t stabilized was his sales and marketing.  Hopefully you realize that ineffective sales and marketing systems are far more threatening to your financial health than are operations systems.

The point I’m trying to get across is that you can look at each one of the areas of your business and ask yourself “Have we put in place a system that greatly reduces our risk?”

If not, invest time to implement those systems. Working on the systems that are completely broken or missing  will pay far bigger dividends than working on systems that are already functionally okay and realistically pose minimal risk.

Food for thought.

Wishing you great success.

Ron

The headline could, and maybe should, refer to punching out a job but today it refers to installing processes and systems in your business. Just like with construction projects, finishing off the last 5% of the implementation of a new business procedure seems to take 50% of the total time. The last 5% is painful, boring, and annoying…but it must be done!

A recent marking email I sent out to my newsletter reader list brought this point to mind. In the email I promised to share the secret to keeping crews on time and in budget. (Side Note: marketing emails to the list are few are far between.)

A bunch of contractors emailed or called in to learn the secret as they were struggling with their crews. A handful of these contractors had 95% of the solution in place yet they hadn’t completed the last few steps and therefore weren’t receiving the desired results.

It really drove home the point that if you don’t finish something 100% you will not receive the benefits you seek. In the case of construction projects that translates to not getting back your full retention.

So here’s my tip: Dad was right. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Don’t let up until you’re done. In some cases, such as with keeping crews on budget and schedule, the follow through requires daily action.

Hope this helps you move forwards.

Take care,

Ron Roberts,
The Contractor’s Business Coach
913-961-1790

Do you ever listen to Paul Harvey? Is he still on the radio?

Like many people, I always loved Mr. Harvey’s stories with the surprise endings that he ended with “and now you know the rest of the story” or something along that line. I bring this up because one of my favorite things to do is to go back to original sources and see whether the current lesson learned actually matches up to the original story.

One recent example was reading about a salesman named Joe Girard. Joe was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records for being the world’s most successful salesman. Joe’s habit of sending a hand written greeting card to every former customer EVERY MONTH is legendary (roughly 13,000 cards monthly). It is often cited by management consultants and sales trainers as the best way to build relationship with customers.

What I found to be funny was that all of these consultants, trainers, and coaches implied Joe was writing elaborate, heartfelt messages. Turns out that wasn’t true. The only message Joe wrote inside each and every card was “I like you.”

How about that. Those three simple words produced phenomenal sales volume for Joe. Almost everyone I’ve ever heard or read citing Joe’s greeting card habit got the story wrong.

Another example would be the incredible popularity of the book titled The Secret. The book’s message apparently is that if you want something bad enough, it will come to you.

The Secret is referring to just one of the characteristics that Napoleon Hill found to be consistently present among highly successful people. Mr. Hill wrote about these characteristics in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich.” Mr. Hill’s message was that ALL of the characteristics had to be present. Some were not enough (certainly not just one).  Another well known characteristic Mr. Hill presented was the use of Master Mind groups.

What’s amazing to me is that an author can take an old idea, ignore several important components, dress it up, and sell it to a new generation who have never read the original source…and they buy it hook, line, and sinker.

Where am I going with this?

Well, other than sharing with you something I love doing, which is uncovering the “rest of the story”, I’m trying to share two points.

1. Very little has changed in the business world. Whatever approaches worked back in the early days of the industrial revolution pretty much still works today.

2. If you really want to find out how to run your business better, stick with the fundamentals. Most everything else is just putting lipstick on a pig.

I wish I had a dollar for every time a contractor called or wrote and told me he is looking to buy a system for his business. The typical question goes something like “Do you have a system you can sell me that will get my business running right?”

The appeal is so obvious. Everyone would like to be able to buy a system they can just insert into their business and magically make their troubles disappear.

It doesn’t work that way.

You can’t take something off the shelf and slide it in your company without customization and communication. At my former consulting firm, the owners and I developed and fine tuned several systems for driving contractor success but each had to be adjusted for our clients’ skills and personalities and for their staffs’ skills and personalities.

The truth of the matter is that people are the systems. You can’t create systems that are independent of the people carrying them out.

Systems only work right when the people carrying out the procedures have mastered the tasks involved and know how to make the right decisions when things get crazy. Which is pretty much every day.

Each business process needs to adhere to certain fundamental truths that govern it’s success but the actual manner in which they are carried out is unique to each company and changes over time as the company’s staff and competitive situation change.

As you’ve probably heard, almost all consultants recommend systematizing your business – thank you Michael Gerber. What we’re all trying to say is that you will never have freedom from the daily grind, nor be able to grow you’re business predictably, if you don’t eventually get everyone competent running the systems that generate leads, close sales, deliver the promised level of service, keep costs down, ensure safety, ensure cash flow, etc.

You need to do that AFTER you figure out how each system should operate. In other words, don’t lock down a system before you’ve got it working correctly.

The problem with most contractors is they don’t know how their business should really function. Even when being in total control of all procedures, they don’t do half of them right. They don’t have their systems figured out.

That’s where a starter kit of systems would come in handy. A starter kit would give you guidelines for how each process should work (for creating job descriptions, estimating, lead generation and so on). You still would have MUCH customization to do, probably all by yourself.

Once you did figure out the systems, you would then be ready to train your employees on their proper execution.

That’s when the real fun begins…and the big profits.