Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / Contractor Rapid Success Framework (Step by Step)
Transcript
- 0:00If your business can't run without you, you don't own a
- 0:03business, you own a job. Scary thought.
- 0:07I'm breaking down in this big year.
- 0:08The five step framework that I use with successful contractors
- 0:13to help them grow, scale and get their time back.
- 0:17And see this very often with construction companies.
- 0:19They want to scale, they want to grow.
- 0:21You're probably in this board for watching this video.
- 0:23You want to expand and you know, be successful in your
- 0:27construction business. The problem is often the focus
- 0:31is too much on the other parts of the business without getting
- 0:35the reach right first. So this is the rapid five step
- 0:38process. We're starting with R, which is
- 0:40reach. And you need to have pent up
- 0:42demand in your marketing, in your clientele because I just
- 0:46did way too much. And you know this with
- 0:48construction businesses, there's these big ups and downs in the
- 0:51amount of projects you have, in the amount of leads that come
- 0:54flowing in. So if you're always trying to
- 0:56meet demand, you're going to have a very inconsistent
- 0:59business and get into a lot of trouble.
- 1:01I've been there, I've, I've had my business go sideways and gone
- 1:05through those, those dips that I just, I hate those times because
- 1:08it's that it seems like the world's going to end.
- 1:10You're pulling out your hair and you are just no frustrated and
- 1:13overwhelmed. So you need reach because you
- 1:16want to make sure that you have more demand than you can
- 1:19facilitate. That may sound like it's going
- 1:22to, you know, make problems for you, but in reality, that's when
- 1:26you can get choosy about the clients that you take on.
- 1:28That's when you can start to raise your prices because you
- 1:31know you've got lots of needs, you've got lots of projects.
- 1:33You don't need to take everything that comes along.
- 1:35You don't need to just keep the guys busy.
- 1:38So things you want to focus on for getting a lot of reach right
- 1:42up front before you start to scale and grow is your, you
- 1:45know, your marketing channels. Social media is big and I'm not
- 1:49big on that. You have to be posting on social
- 1:51media every single day and any of these big, you know, millions
- 1:54of followers or any of that stuff.
- 1:56But just get your bases covered. Get your profile set up, get
- 2:00some links on there, get your logo or nice picture of like a
- 2:03project he did so that anybody searching for you on social
- 2:06media or if they see your post on social media, go to your
- 2:09profile. There should be a nice picture
- 2:11yourself, a cover photo with your logo or your company.
- 2:14They should know what you do and there should be a link to your
- 2:16website for them to go get more information so that you're not
- 2:21just letting these leads drop off.
- 2:22And then from there, just schedule like a weekly post.
- 2:26You don't need to be posting every day.
- 2:28I mean, if you can rate, but social media is is just a bunch
- 2:31of noise at the end of the day. And yes, there's ways to do it
- 2:35effectively, but ultimately it is more like a branding type
- 2:38thing. And your direct response from
- 2:42social media for construction company is, is not typically
- 2:45going to happen that much. People will know about you.
- 2:48But ultimately, like the people that are going to see posts on
- 2:51social media are people that probably are your friends or
- 2:54family or people that already really know you well.
- 2:56So yes, be present there, but don't go overboard. e-mail
- 3:00marketing is low hanging fruit. If you don't have e-mail
- 3:02marketing set up, go get it set up after this video and so
- 3:06bored, reach out to us, drop a comment below.
- 3:09We've got software that will help you with e-mail marketing
- 3:11and it is again very easy, especially with Chubb T I've got
- 3:15other videos on how to do this with chat TBT.
- 3:17Create emails with your voice, with your branding, with your
- 3:21ideal client in mind, with your content.
- 3:23You put it in there, it does its work.
- 3:25Yes, you got to move things around and copy paste the punch,
- 3:28but it's easier than ever today. And e-mail marketing keeps your
- 3:32leads nurtured very strong because like I said, you need
- 3:36this reach off the bat to have a certain amount of leads in order
- 3:39to get everything else in place. Because if you're building like
- 3:42a House of Cards, it's very easy for it to fall over.
- 3:45You need like marketing, having that marketing and that reach
- 3:48and that lead generation is, you know, those systems in place is
- 3:52what's going to help kind of create the fuel to the fire to,
- 3:56to grow and scale your business from there.
- 3:57You want to be visible on all the search engine.
- 3:59So Google My Business profile, go get that set up.
- 4:02And you know, there's a bunch of other ones being Yelp and all
- 4:04these other directories online. Go get all those set up very
- 4:07easy. After all that kind of stuff is
- 4:10is taken care of, you may look into, you know, online ads or
- 4:14get a marketing agency. A little caveat to marketing
- 4:17agencies is just make sure you know what you're getting and
- 4:20make sure that you're paying for results.
- 4:23And that's very clear from the outset that you know there's
- 4:26going to be an investment period for marketing to kick in.
- 4:29But at the end of the day, if you are three months or six
- 4:32months in and you know it's your return on investment is is
- 4:36nowhere to be seen and you're not getting leads, You need to
- 4:38have that tough conversation. The last point of every talking,
- 4:40both for reach, is your referral network.
- 4:43This is a slower process, but it's also the strongest type of
- 4:48leads that you can possibly get growing your referral network.
- 4:50So you should always be outwardly looking to connect
- 4:54with other people in your industry.
- 4:56The best are typically ones who have the same clients as you and
- 5:01are not in a competing business. So this could be architects,
- 5:04designers, real estate agents, moving companies, maybe it's
- 5:08your cleaning companies, whatever trade comes before you
- 5:11in the process or whatever professional comes before you in
- 5:14a process. Those are good people to know
- 5:16because they're going to be in touch with your ideal clients
- 5:19before they're ready to, you know, build or design or, you
- 5:23know, get whatever type of service you offer.
- 5:24So always be building referral network.
- 5:27Those are ones that are directly related.
- 5:28Your referral network can also be influential people.
- 5:31So if you know, like really established business owners,
- 5:33people that just have a lot of contacts or very, you know,
- 5:36publicly well known, of course, those are great connections as
- 5:39well. And it's not enough to just make
- 5:41a connection and be like, yeah, if I see someone, I refer you
- 5:44and you know, you do the same, right?
- 5:46You want to invest in a relationship.
- 5:48You want to, you want to have the relationship about more
- 5:50about you giving to them and what you can provide to them.
- 5:54And you have to take the initiative to follow up.
- 5:57I set reminders every three months to follow up with key
- 6:01people in my network. I would suggest you do the same,
- 6:03especially if you just met them at like a networking event or
- 6:06someone like connected you and you had a conversation.
- 6:09Set a reminder 3 months. And this should all be automated
- 6:11and in this CRM system. But you know, every three
- 6:13months, six months, reach out to them, phone call, hey, how's it
- 6:16going? Just checking in, how's
- 6:17business, you know, yada, yada, just a touch base.
- 6:20And that's how you keep those warm and you build those
- 6:22relationships which are super important.
- 6:24So that's the first part of this five step process is you want to
- 6:27get reach. If you're struggling with leads
- 6:30or the amount of work you have, then this is the place you need
- 6:35to focus and you need to stay focused on this marketing to get
- 6:39enough reach to then build your business off of.
- 6:42You hear me talk about like systems are the foundation of
- 6:44your business, but without marketing that foundation has
- 6:48nowhere to go and you can't get established because you don't
- 6:51have any money to finance the, you know, the, the building of,
- 6:54of your business. So number one is reach.
- 6:56Our next one is administration. So we're doing the rapid, rapid
- 7:01process here. Administration.
- 7:03The next step to scaling quickly is once you have that marketing
- 7:06set up, now get an admin person, go hire virtual assistant if you
- 7:11have to couple hours a week, whatever the minimum is that you
- 7:14can afford at this point in time, you need an assistant
- 7:18yesterday. If you don't have a good
- 7:20assistant, go and get one. That should be your next step.
- 7:22After you have that like a good reach and you've got that pent
- 7:26up demand for for, you know, project the administration
- 7:29person. This could be, you know, an
- 7:31assistant. Whatever the process for hiring
- 7:35and delegating to this person. I've I've got another video, but
- 7:39what you need to be thinking about now is start.
- 7:41My one of my favorite lists is a delegate.
- 7:43This list. So I start, I have a list
- 7:46ongoing things whenever I'm doing something in my business
- 7:49and it's like this is a little bit boring or I could easily
- 7:53have someone else do this, I throw it on my delegate this
- 7:58list. That way when you hire this
- 8:01person, you've now got a huge list that you populate of all
- 8:04the different tasks that person can do.
- 8:05You'll still need to create some training materials and, you
- 8:08know, some process behind it. And you know, it's not like you
- 8:12can just hand off that list and hope for the best because it's
- 8:14just going to be a disaster. But now you've got a big scope
- 8:17and you can kind of prioritize like, yeah, they could do this
- 8:19or they could do this. And and it's very easy then to
- 8:23create a little training or some sort of instructions and have
- 8:26them, you know, take with it and run with it.
- 8:28As far as your first like SOP document, there is like the
- 8:32easiest way to get a SOP in place is just to record yourself
- 8:37doing whatever the task is. So if that's invoicing a client,
- 8:40you just do a screen recording and, you know, invoice the
- 8:43client that can that end up self is the easiest way to get a
- 8:46quick training in place. The new assistant or you know,
- 8:50administration person can then watch the video and do the task.
- 8:54I would say that it works well, but it's probably going to hit
- 8:586070% and you're going to still probably have to, you know, ask
- 9:01a bunch of things. And the thing with the video is
- 9:03they get outdated pretty quick because programs change your
- 9:06structure of the business changes all you know, things
- 9:09change videos, you know, to record them does take a lot of
- 9:12time. So from there though, from that
- 9:14video, the next step is to have an SOP document.
- 9:18And I like to have both of those because some people are going to
- 9:21be more visual. They could read through it.
- 9:22They're more, you know, like the standard type education model
- 9:25where you read, you read what you need to do and then, and
- 9:28then you go and execute more. Other people are more visual.
- 9:30They need to see it. Plus there's just levels of
- 9:32detail, especially when you're using programs or doing certain
- 9:35things on a screen that is going to be not like you're not going
- 9:40to get in, you know, a written document when you're building
- 9:43the video, make sure you're talking through it.
- 9:45So, you know, I click here and now I'm going to go do this.
- 9:48And now I, I, I check out the estimate and I confirm that we
- 9:53were this or on the project. So this is, you know, just talk
- 9:56your way through viewing the actual SOP.
- 9:58That's how you get your first SOP in place.
- 10:00You can do the video and then have your assistant write the
- 10:03SOP. So little quick tip here, CHEAT
- 10:07SHEET here is do the video and then ask your assistant, Hey,
- 10:11can you please, you know, go through this video, ask me if
- 10:15there's anything that's unclear or if you got stuck anywhere.
- 10:18And then I want you to, to write out a document.
- 10:20You can transcribe the video. Use chat should be T to create
- 10:24the P You know it, it works, it'll get you there, but there
- 10:28are there are, you know, better structures, but that'll work.
- 10:30There's a lot of different ways to do it, but essentially those
- 10:32are the two pieces making sense. You got me here.
- 10:35This is helping so far. Could this be with thumbs up?
- 10:37Super appreciate you for doing that.
- 10:38I really try to put out the best content here because I want you
- 10:41to grow your business fast. I've been through this situation
- 10:45myself, my own contracting business.
- 10:46I worked with clients every day on how can they scale?
- 10:50How can they build systems? How do we get things in place
- 10:52for them to make their life easier?
- 10:54It's I know the pains of being overwhelmed and having a million
- 10:58and one things come at you. So I'm really want to create
- 11:01very streamlined, specific advice to help you build your
- 11:04amazing business. So as far as the administration,
- 11:07two things that they should always be doing for you is your
- 11:11e-mail. So have them manage your e-mail.
- 11:13I'm sure you get a lot of spam emails.
- 11:14You probably get a lot of emails from clients.
- 11:16So organize emails and make sure that you know they're there.
- 11:21Probably had like maybe depends on what kind of emails are
- 11:24getting, but like 30% at least are probably like garbage or
- 11:28don't really need to do anything.
- 11:30There's probably about 10 to 2030% that is like for your
- 11:33information, you don't really need a response.
- 11:35It's just like someone sending you information.
- 11:38Then you got like 30 to 40% that you as a business owner are
- 11:40going to have to respond to or provide some insight to.
- 11:42But you can train your admin more and more as the user inbox
- 11:46to formulate response and you can always approve their
- 11:49response so they can create a response to.
- 11:51It's like, you know, Joe Smith, message us about their project.
- 11:55He's wondering about their schedule they created.
- 11:57You know, this e-mail is a response.
- 11:58Does this look good to you? You can be like, yeah, that
- 12:01looks great. Send it off, right?
- 12:02So that it only takes a couple seconds of your time to review
- 12:05it. Or it's like, no, make sure you
- 12:07add, you know, this additional information or, or whatever,
- 12:09right? So have the managing your your
- 12:10e-mail inbox. We'll save you a ton of time.
- 12:12And then you're scheduling. If you have specific, like you
- 12:14should have calendar links to help like people book
- 12:17appointments with you, which will help a lot.
- 12:19But your admin should be looking at your schedule.
- 12:21You should have open conversations about, you know,
- 12:25your work schedule, working hours, where to fit things in,
- 12:28try to bulk, bulk and number of stuff at one time and that as
- 12:34well, you know, reception for answering phones and things like
- 12:36that. So that Emma person, if they can
- 12:38save you 5/10/20 hours a week, you're again going to be in a
- 12:42much better place to scale rapidly.
- 12:44And that brings me to my next thing.
- 12:45So we got RI and now we got P, which is paid.
- 12:49You need to get paid. You got your marketing, you got
- 12:51your admin person and you got to make sure that you are efficient
- 12:54in your business because if you're not getting paid
- 12:57properly, when you start to scale, you're going to add
- 12:59overhead and you're going to have less control and management
- 13:03and on, you know, frontline insight as you grow and expand
- 13:07that you're going to have to have a certain level of margin
- 13:09and amount of money in order to facilitate that growth making
- 13:13sense. So paid.
- 13:15What I mean by that you need to make sure you're getting paid on
- 13:17estimating. So this I'm not saying you have
- 13:20to you can't do free estimates. What I'm saying is you're
- 13:23estimating has to be at a level that you know that when the
- 13:27project is complete, you are making your margins.
- 13:29That means it's accurate, it's priced to current prices, not
- 13:32using, you know, historical prices from six months ago or a
- 13:35year ago, that you've got a good templates and review process so
- 13:39that nothing is missed, everything is organized and that
- 13:43your margins are accurate. So if you've got 20% margins or
- 13:4740% margins or whatever they may be, you, you put your, your
- 13:51markup on there. And there's, there's a
- 13:53difference between, you know, markup margin.
- 13:54But assuming that you know that you then know your overhead, you
- 13:58know your contingencies, you know how far projects can swing
- 14:02out, you know one way or the other, got job costing in place
- 14:05that you know which type projects are your most
- 14:08profitable, which services are your most profitable.
- 14:10If a project went sideways and you lost money on it, you know
- 14:14how much money and where you lost money.
- 14:17So being able to know that you're going to get paid
- 14:20properly when you produce an estimate is like most important
- 14:23thing because that's like upstream, right?
- 14:25That's where you've got that marketing built up.
- 14:27You're estimating is where you make your money.
- 14:29It's not like when he gets you get paid during the project and
- 14:32when it's complete, but getting money when the project is
- 14:35complete doesn't mean you made money and it's in your pocket.
- 14:38Estimating is where that happens.
- 14:40So super important for estimating profitability.
- 14:43Again, having a system in place where you know that your salary
- 14:49as the business owner, as the business manager is covered and
- 14:53you're going to be profitable. On top of that, you're not
- 14:55operating on all profit just goes to you and there's no money
- 14:59left or right. So having a proper amount of
- 15:02profit, that profit is what you build your wealth on, what you
- 15:07build, you know, your future life on.
- 15:09And that profit, it shouldn't be used for this, But you know that
- 15:13if times get tight or something, it negatively impacts the
- 15:17business. You've got some buffer there and
- 15:19you can maybe, you know, decrease your profit a bit to
- 15:22help facilitate the business and get you through those tough
- 15:24times. And then the final thing with
- 15:26getting paid is your financial management.
- 15:28This is how you have your banking set up.
- 15:30This is how you have just the, the systems and processes and
- 15:34the administration that I mentioned earlier will be a big
- 15:36part of this to making sure that invoicing is going out on time.
- 15:41If paint clients are are late on payments, that there is a
- 15:44process to remind them about payments, to collect payments to
- 15:47make sure that cash flow is going through the business, that
- 15:50you're looking at your, your reports that your bookkeeping in
- 15:52place. So getting all this right is the
- 15:54next step and you know, being able to scale rapidly and having
- 15:57that rapid success. So I got two more points coming
- 15:59up here. We got I&D to make out this
- 16:01rapid five step framework, which is going to help you grow.
- 16:06The next step, the fourth step in this process is invest.
- 16:10So you've kind of got your bases covered now with your reach,
- 16:13your administration and getting paid.
- 16:15Now you need to invest because you know that you're good and
- 16:17your other departments. Now you can start to invest in
- 16:19people, you can start to invest in systems and you can start to
- 16:22invest in wealth. So those are the three areas
- 16:25that you need to be investing in.
- 16:26The first one, people. Now that you've got your your
- 16:29bases covered, you can now bring in more people.
- 16:32So your your marketing is in a good place.
- 16:34They're going to get more projects, you're going to start
- 16:36to expand and you need to have systems for bringing in good
- 16:40people. And you got to invest in the
- 16:42people that you already have with good training with helping
- 16:46them kind of get to that next level.
- 16:48Or if they're not able to do that, bringing in people that
- 16:51can be, you know, foreman or project manager or operations
- 16:54manager, sales manager or whoever that you know, next
- 16:58group of people will be to help you build out your business.
- 17:01Coupled with that is system. So systems and people.
- 17:04That is what that's what a business is built on and the
- 17:08systems investment, it could be new technology, but typically at
- 17:12this point, you probably already have some good software in
- 17:14place. You may have to like optimize
- 17:16your tech stack to some degree. But the systems that I'm talking
- 17:19about is investing in creating really solid processes for every
- 17:24stage of your business. Because you've already got your
- 17:26administration person, they commit help you with this.
- 17:29And you know, if you want additional help and you want to
- 17:31know actually how to do this or someone who's already done this
- 17:33and can just give you the systems and you can run with
- 17:36them, reach out to us. That's what we do.
- 17:38We help systematize businesses. Different systems you want to
- 17:41get in place is like for people. You need to know who your ideal
- 17:44employees are. You need to have a hiring
- 17:46process to make sure you're asking the right questions,
- 17:48you're doing your due diligence. Then a good onboarding process
- 17:51for your employees as well as good onboarding process for
- 17:55clients. Then training for your employees
- 17:57to make sure they're training, having milestones, having
- 18:00retention programs so that you're not doing all this work
- 18:03with hiring and training someone and then they leave in six
- 18:06months or a year or even 2 years.
- 18:08You want those long term employees to help grow and build
- 18:11your business. Yeah, same thing with like the
- 18:13client experience, like I mentioned, your project
- 18:15management. So just heavy on systems and
- 18:18building systems. Go check out some other videos.
- 18:19I've got videos on every specific system that you need to
- 18:22systematize for your business. And the last thing you're going
- 18:25to start investing in at this stage is your wealth.
- 18:27This is what is going to enable you to have some Peace of Mind.
- 18:31It's what's going to enable you to know that there is a life
- 18:35outside of your business. And it's just going to give you
- 18:37some confidence to know that even if things don't pan out or
- 18:41the economy goes down or whatever may happen, you've got
- 18:45like this, you know, nest egg or whatever golden egg have like
- 18:48investments that are generally growing your wealth and
- 18:51providing income and you can retire off of when the time
- 18:54comes. Hopefully this making sense that
- 18:57the the investments that I mentioned is like you're pulling
- 18:59wealth, that profit outside of your company and you're
- 19:01investing could be in stocks, real estate, you know, whatever.
- 19:04I'm not going to give you specific investing advice on
- 19:06this video, but there's a lot of different safe places to put
- 19:11your money that it'll grow overtime and you want to be
- 19:13thinking long term, 10/20/30 years out.
- 19:16Alright, moving on to #5 we are going rapidly here.
- 19:20The last part of being able to scale rapidly and grow your
- 19:25business is to detach. Your business is your baby.
- 19:29You've, you've, you, you know, you founded it, you've grown it,
- 19:34you've been out there every stage of the way.
- 19:36You, you're very closely in tune with your business.
- 19:40But in order to grow, you need to detach from your business,
- 19:45you need to be able to delegate, you need to be able to trust
- 19:48people and you need to be able to do this with leadership
- 19:51skills. And there will be this will be a
- 19:54comfortable because if you're outside of your comfort zone,
- 19:57you're going to have to give up some control that you're used
- 19:59to. You're going to have to create
- 20:01systems and have a level of leadership that people know what
- 20:05to do. They know how to make decisions.
- 20:08They are aware of how the company operates without you
- 20:14constantly having to tell them or be.
- 20:16Involved with all the little details so that is a very
- 20:20difficult thing to accomplish. But if you follow those those
- 20:24first four steps that will get you on your Rd. there very, very
- 20:28quickly. The reason this is difficult is
- 20:30because you are comfortable where you're at right now and
- 20:34you may not even realize this, but you're used to being able to
- 20:37manage being able to talk to every client if there's a
- 20:39problem, you solve it right. So you're kind of that hero.
- 20:43You're the, you know, the big kahuna in your company by being
- 20:47able to like get back and like empower people and trust people
- 20:51to make decisions, to create documents of like, this is how
- 20:54we make decisions. This is our mission, our vision,
- 20:57and this is where we're going as a company.
- 20:59Being able to express yourself very candidly about like, hey, I
- 21:03need you to handle this. This is what I think about this
- 21:07situation, but I need your feedback.
- 21:08I hired you to be smarter than me to be able to make these
- 21:11decisions and to grow into this role.
- 21:13So I'd like you to be able to take this, you know, when people
- 21:16make mistakes, how do you do that?
- 21:18When do you decide if someone's not going to be a good fit for
- 21:20the company long term? I talking to a good friend of
- 21:23mine the other day. He's got a general contracting
- 21:25company. He's had to let go some very
- 21:28long term key employees and his business because they were not
- 21:34aligned with the business visually, like with the vision
- 21:37of the business as it as he was planning long term.
- 21:40He can be uncomfortable your employees for you to detach
- 21:42because they're used to always calling you or getting your
- 21:45advice or, you know, being a little bit lazy because it's
- 21:48like, oh, I've got a problem. I'll call the Bloss or I'll call
- 21:51whoever right. And that so that, that part of
- 21:54the business is kind of like the last kind of step to getting
- 21:57rapid scaling and be able to detach, being able to get out of
- 22:01the day-to-day and just have that, that ability to be the
- 22:06business owner, work on the business instead of in the
- 22:09business, which is what I mentioned in the beginning is
- 22:11doing a job or do you own a business?
- 22:13And this is how you own a business.
- 22:14So making sense, you are doing good, you're on your way.
- 22:18Go check out these other videos we got here to help the load the
- 22:21systems and, and complete this process.
- 22:23I'll see you on the next one.