Okay – I have a confession to make. I have been so busy and haven’t made any BLOG Posts lately and I feel really guilty about it. I owe it to our readers and my partner Ron to be an active contributor to this Blog.
I also thought it important to inform everyone that all our newsletters are completely free again! They come out every two weeks. The majority of the time on Wednesdays. We are realizing that many subscribers are not getting them because of blocking issues from network servers. So if you are reading this and haven’t been getting newsletters regularly, please contact us immediately so we cant remedy the issue for you.
The truth of the matter is their is so much information out their and so little time that I wondered if anybody was reading the posts. Then I remembered a story my dad told me about how it didn’t matter how many people my grandfather tried to help and if they ignored or didn’t appreciate his efforts as long as over time you make a difference in at least one persons life.
I remembered a time after a seminar in Las Vegas that a long time business associate and friend told me that his wife, who had been struggling was tremendously impacted by my seminar. Coincidentally we were on the same flight back to Chicago and she elaborated on her positive seminar experience.
Then it dawned on me. I reflected back on that morning and walking into the room and feeling slightly deflated because attendance was down and I wasn’t presenting to a standing room only crowd.
Maureen’s sharing her positive experience afterward made my memory of that session uplifting. Perhaps if the room was packed she wouldn’t have had the same benefit. The complexion of the audience can make or break a presentation. Regardless of the circumstances I touched someone in a positive way and in return she touched me back by letting me know.
I am in the process of updating some seminar topics and creating new ones. It is my goal not to just entertain but to make a difference it peoples life. If you would like to know more about upcoming seminars please contact me by email and let me know what area you are in. I will be happy to forward you cities, dates and topics.
On another note, you may have not heard as much from Ron or I lately but be assured we have been hard at work behind the scenes working on updating the filthyrichcontractor.com website. In fact we have some big surprises coming your way. Check back often because you are going to see more regular posts. Write us something worthy of posting for you. You too can help other people by sharing your knowledge.
One last request, if you are reader of this Blog and we make an impact with you, positive or not, your feedback and constructive criticism is essential.
One of the most pleasurable parts of being an adviser to contractors is visiting with the field workers. Not only do they tell it like it is, they are ground zero for the industry. They’re in it for both a living and a lifestyle.
I had an interesting conversation with a field guy the other day. My gym decided it was time for a “freshen up”. New paint, TVs, ceiling tiles, lights, etc. The gym would be closed for 9 days while the work took place starting at 10:00 PM on a Friday night. Naturally, the contractors were allowed to start prepping Friday morning.
As I walked into the locker room, I ran right into the scaffold a drywaller was working on. He looked familiar and sure enough we had met a couple of years earlier on a large prison project. I asked him how things were going for his company – an outstanding union drywall sub that is well run.
He proceeded to tell me that when we last saw each other the company was keeping 225 field guys busy. Last fall (2009) they were down to the 18 senior foremen. Those 18 guys were the only field workers at the company. He felt fortunate to have remained fully employed the entire way. The company had since crept back up to about 25 field guys. Remember this is a very well run company, that enjoys a great reputation among GCs, that can perform both new construction and tenant renovation. Their work load had slipped 90%!
This is not a doom and gloom blog. Things are turning around. Just thought you might appreciate reading about the depth of destruction this recession has had on our industry. Even the best run companies took a huge hit and the impact was felt nowhere harder than on the front line.
Hope your world is considerably brighter than this company’s.
While taking a break from our working weekend to pick up a part for his motorcycle trailer, Guy and I met an interesting union contractor who shared a crazy story about his local chapter. This story was so far out of the box that it took Guy and I a couple of minutes to verify we had heard it right.
Here’s the short version: this man’s union local was requiring members who owned a stake in their companies to pay union dues and benefits on at least 40 hours a week…whether they worked it or not!
The local’s goal was to drive the small union contractor out of business so that the larger union companies would have less competition. Crazy.
Doesn’t our industry have enough challenges these days with the economy and all? Don’t the unions have bigger fish to fry than hurting each others’ business? Crazy.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, you come across a hard-working owner of a small company that shares a nearly impossible to believe story.
The lead article in my local Business Journal was on the recession’s impact on our architect community. The author’s sources estimated that 30% of the city’s architects had been put out of work. AIA National estimates that 40,000 positions have been lost nation wide since July 2008.
My heart goes out to everyone who has lost their job, but it especially goes out to our architects. Few in our industry realize how hard an architectural degree is to earn and how poorly they are paid.
I will never forget my first week in college. My dorm floor was flooded with wanna be engineers who were getting settled in to our new digs, getting used to a class load of physics, chemistry, and calculus and figuring out who our new friends were. We had all received a shock at the difference between our college courses and our high school courses. But we had it easy compared to the guy that lived across the hall.
One week into school, literally our first full weekend, this guy was having to pull an all-nighter. And guess what field he was studying?
You got it.
Architecture.
His all-nighters didn’t stop that weekend. He pretty much had to pull them for five years. That degree is crazy. It takes such incredible talent and dedication to earn and when they enter the working world, they get paid peanuts.
The article went on to mention a trend that contractors have been experiencing: even when you make a selected short list, the list isn’t really very short and it is filled with competition that is every bit as qualified.
Guy’s last blog entry mentioned that his show audiences had enjoyed decent years. Those contractors probably represent a very small segment of the industry. The cold hard data shows that the implosion of the banking industry has taken a severe toll on the construction industry.
A lot of great, hard working, salt of the earth people are struggling to get by. Hopefully, the people in D.C. and on Wall Street can get their act together and straighten this mess out.
I can’t believe it is February already! Looking back at my calendar I was amazed to see I was on the road for 19 overnights in the month of January. With that being said I have met dozens of fine contractors over the last month. I put on thirteen presentations and when I polled the attendees the majority of participants had a year in 2009 that was equal to or better than that of 2008. Even though it was a non-scientific survey it was reassuring to know that some contractors are not only surviving but also thriving.
The interesting question is what are they doing differently?
I will be sharing in an upcoming newsletter some of the informal results I have experienced as of late. One thing I can report back now, is that the trade-show attendees were serious about getting good information and intent on learning new concepts to help further develop their business.
Stayed tuned for my next newsletter in just a couple of weeks.
After much bantering back and forth over the past several months, we have decided to adjust our RISK-FREE offer for club membership. A new membership now has two types of guaranteed satisfaction.
You can sign up for a free 30 day trial membership OR take advantage of our three month or annual membership discounts complete with a 30 day money back guarantee.
Don’t wait too long to take advantage of this most generous offer. As soon as we strike our deal with a third party service provider who shall remain nameless, the $19.98 monthly full access price for new members will go away.
We will still offer a base rate of $19.98 but it no longer give new members access to our presentations and other advanced features. Existing members will be grandfathered as long as they keep their account in good standing.
Act now and gain full access to all of our proven solutions for 30 days absolutely FREE. Click here to join.
We’re pleased to announce that the discussion board on our membership site is now active.
Members can introduce themselves, ask questions, seek opinions, and compare notes. We have created sections for each major business function to keep conversations focused and organized. The board contains all the usual discussion board features with one notable exception: in this case only contractors committed to growing their business will be posting. That’s quite a change from most discussion boards.
If you’ve ever ventured over to a free discussion board, you’ve probably noticed the discussions often devolve into petty little cat fights. We will not allow that to happen on the club’s board.
Guy and I will be monitoring everything and clarifying suggestions that we believe violate sound business practice. That feature is missing from most forum dialogues.
Is one of your projects on hold due to funding problems?
If so, we may have found another funding source for the project’s developer. Pass the following onto them (via the General Contractor).
Carl Settles
NorthStar Funding Group
877-281-6660 (toll free)
909-996-6795 (direct)
909-474-8903 (fax)
nsfg@northstarfundinggroup.net
www.NorthStarFundingGroup.net
APPARENTLY NorthStar Funding will loan up to 90% of project value.
If the unstable bank situation is holding up one of your projects, give Carl a call to see whether your project may qualify.
If you are a subcontractor, copy and past this information into an email and send it the project’s General Contractor or CM. With the construction economy dragging as badly as it is, aggressive action is in your best interest.
If you’d like to discuss with me before calling Carl, drop me an email (ron@filthyrichcontractor.com) or call 913-961-1790. I’ll share what I know.
Be Forewarned: we are not vouching for Carl or NorthStar. We know nothing about the legitimacy.
Thought we’d pass on a few stories that have come our way recently. They really demonstrate the magnitude of the melt down.
The first comes second hand from a local saw mill owner. He opened his mill in the mid-60s. He recently told a mutual friend that he has NEVER seen the economy this dead. That’s saying something considering the number of recessions he has personally survived including the horrible 1982/1983 recession when no one was building anything.
The second story comes from a paving maintenance contractor. He went out to price a simple pot hole repair and was stunned to discover that an asphalt plant offered to fix the pot hole for about half the price. To put that into perspective, asphalt plants usually chase road work and only drop down to installing NEW parking lots when times get tough. Them doing a patch is unheard of. Their overhead alone would be more than the price of the job.
Our third story comes from an electrician I know. He went after a new project very aggressively. The project was prevailing wage so nobody had a wage rate advantage. He assumed his production would be quite a bit higher than normal, and his crews are already incredibly fast. He slashed his margin…and he was more than 10% above the low bid! The winner has NO CHANCE of getting out of the job with his direct costs being below his price.
Our fourth story comes from a large, regional multi-family remodeler. He has built an amazing business over the last two decades but, as he just discovered, no great strategy goes unpunished. He had focused his business on a highly specialized niche and at a size that served large, publically traded property owners. He owned his niche. Unfortunately for him, his clients have cut their spending by 80%. 80%! They have no money so this contractor, who has done everything right for over 20 years, is forced to slash staff and overhead costs just to survive.
Our final story comes from a mechanical service contractor. Here is another contractor who excels at keeping clients happy and loyal. One of his previously SUPER LOYAL clients was planning on expanding part of his mechanical system and had always just handed the job to this contractor because they did his work on a time and material to a GMP basis. This time the work will be bid by eight (8!) other contractors – all at the advice of the design team. Stupid design team.
These stories came from coast to coast, North to South. It’s not just in your area. It’s happening everywhere. Dig in and get everybody inside your company giving their all. Their future depends on it.
After three years of content generation and six months of site set-up, the www.FilthyRichContractor.com Private Club’s doors have official been thrown wide open. New members are joining daily to access our set of integrated business systems for organizing and growing a construction business.
All of the systems and solutions are field proven. They work in the chaotic and challenging world that is our beloved construction industry.
The club is for the Do-It-Yourself business owner who is looking for a solution to a pressing problem, validation that he or she is on the right path, or simply is ready to build a business that will produce the riches and freedom ultimately desired.
To see the vast amount of content we’ve stored in within the club, click here.
