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

Attention Contractors, Developers, and Home Owners:

Keep an eye on the blog. As soon as I get the green light, I am going to be telling you about a new service that is very, very cool and way over-due.

The service is going to eliminate many of the payment headaches contractors and suppliers suffer while giving the client far greater security and support. The service is not quite ready for full roll out. The team who has dreamed up and deployed the online tool is still beta-testing the user interface.

It’s going to be a service you’ll want to use as frequently as possible. It’s that good.

Stay tuned.

Ron

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

Good Morning All,

How about a few thoughts from the road?

I am sitting in the Houghton County Airport in Michigan’s UP.  If you ever get the chance, visit this area. It is absolutely stunning!

Kayaker’s paddling up and down the lake. Water front homes sitting along side restaurants and businesses. Hills with winding roads. Old copper mines dotting the landscape.  Amazing.

Spent a long day with my client who is headquartered here. We were both excited to see that his financial position is very, very sound. His banker must be thrilled with his balance sheet. Seeing a contractor who had actually significant wealth in the business was quite refreshing.

As usual, once I got face-to-face grilling my client on the position his business was in, the real threats were not the ones he thought they were. We had already put in place the systems needed to assure efficient field performance. He believed operations was his biggest threat. Turns out he needed to redirect his strategy and turn up the heat on his marketing and sales efforts.

He’s off and running. Back to KC.

Hope you have a great week!

Ron

The construction market is quickly becoming survival of the fittest. The weak are not going to survive.Their errors will become too great to overcome. Welcome to life during a recession. You may be too young to remember what a real recession feels like. You’re about to find out.

I am hearing two stories from contractors these days: many have no work at all and others are actually doing quite well. The middle ground, the place where most contractors lived, has all but disappeared.

Contractors who haven’t set their sales and marketing engines to full throttle are asking for trouble.The contractors who are doing well all appear to have well established marketing and networking systems. They’ve spent years building up and taking care of their contacts. That past effort is paying off in spades.

If you aren’t busting your butt chasing working and promoting your business, you’d better get started. Good work is not going to walk through your door. You’ve got to dig it up before somebody else does.

Bid prices are dropping like rocks. Your competition needs work and is willing to take it close to cost just to keep their crews and equipment busy.  That’s not a game you want to play. You need to find a better game because the truth of the matter is…

Recessions shake out the week business owners.

That’s why many economists believe mild recessions are a good thing for the overall economy (of course they are turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the suffering of the masses who don’t have the financial safety net to weather the storm easily).

The owners who don’t  know how take care of their customers and their staff are going to lose.The owners who can’t see past the immediate almighty dollar are going to lose.

It really is going to be survival of the fittest. The only saving grace is the government’s tried and true formula for breathing life back into the economy: huge federal construction projects. You might want to begin positioning yourself to take advantage of the opportunity that is likely to arise.