Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / How To Scale a Construction Company In 2026 (MASTERCLASS)

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How To Scale a Construction Company In 2026 (MASTERCLASS) · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

0:00
I'm about to give you the full road map from A-Z on how to
0:03
scale a construction company to 10 million without working 80
0:07
hour work weeks or hiring 100 new employees.
0:10
But first I want you to understand something.
0:12
This is the exact framework I use to triple revenue in my
0:16
general contracting business, scale over a dozen contractors
0:19
beyond 5 million, and lessons I learned by working inside $100
0:24
million construction company. This is not some generic info
0:27
from someone who has never run this business before, but in
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2017 I was working 70 hour work weeks, stressed out, I hired
0:35
coaches, I was managing my team, but my business just wasn't
0:39
growing. Then I discovered how to scale a
0:41
construction company the right way, and since then I've helped
0:44
multiple contractors scale beyond that 5 million mark,
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tripled revenue for one contractor, and doubled margins
0:51
of a recent client in just two months.
0:53
Now most contractors think that you need a lot of resources to
0:57
start scaling, but in reality, you grow your resources when you
1:01
start scaling. So with that being said, we're
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going to cover the top strategies that scale
1:06
construction companies beyond that 10 million mark.
1:09
How to actually protect your margins as you scale, the
1:12
correct way of building efficient systems that work
1:16
while you sleep. And the biggest mistake that
1:18
stock contractors for reaching 8 figures.
1:21
So major myth holding a lot of contractors back is that you
1:24
need a lot of time or big marketing budget in order to
1:27
scale. But I'm about to show you how to
1:29
actually scale about any of these, the $10 million scaling
1:38
framework, these are the three levers that actually scale a
1:41
construction company. You don't need to add 100 new
1:44
things. You scale by focusing on these
1:46
three levers. So they're increasing your Net
1:48
margin, a good profit margin to be able to scale and invest in
1:52
new areas in your business, increasing the deal flow.
1:55
So how many leads, how many good quality leads are coming in and
1:59
increasing project size and quality.
2:00
So we don't always need just a ton more leads.
2:03
Just increasing the the size of the project and the quality of
2:07
the clients that you're getting is often enough in order to
2:10
scale and grow and wrap up your business.
2:13
The first leave room we talked about is increasing your net
2:15
margins. Increasing your margin is one of
2:17
the most important things for proper scaling.
2:20
If your margins are too low, you can grow your revenue, but the
2:23
actual money that you're putting in your pocket is going to
2:25
actually diminish because as you scale, you're probably going to
2:28
add project managers, more office staff, maybe a
2:31
salesperson, you're going to put more into advertising spend.
2:35
So there's all of these additional investments you're
2:38
going to need in order to scale, and if your margins in the wrong
2:40
place, you are going to find yourself essentially broke and
2:44
wondering why you chose to scale in the 1st place.
2:47
We've gotta get the financials, the money, the estimating, all
2:50
this stuff, right, which is what we're going through now.
2:52
So in order to charge premium prices, you need to position
2:55
yourself around a specific ideal client.
2:59
Just being a generic contractor in the marketplace is not enough
3:02
nowadays, especially if you want to grow your business and become
3:06
a dominant player in your marketplace.
3:07
So niching down on a specific type of client who can afford
3:12
your services and is more concerned about the building
3:14
experience and the quality than they are with just saving a
3:18
couple bucks and finding the cheapest contractor possible.
3:21
You don't want to be competing on pricing.
3:23
Hey, XYZ Contractors said they could do it for this much.
3:26
Can you match that price or can you do it lower?
3:28
In order to grow the business that you want to be at, you need
3:32
to be able to charge premium prices and you need to provide a
3:35
premium service to your clients. So first thing is raise your
3:39
prices and then be able to back that up with the value provide
3:43
and the branding and your messaging.
3:45
Why do I need to go into all this detail?
3:47
It's super important. The next thing is nailing your
3:49
niche. So finding out what is the
3:51
problem that you solve and what can you solve easiest better
3:55
than your competitors, better than anybody else.
3:57
What comes naturally to you? So this could be the
4:00
professional who's, you know, got a raise and now they want to
4:02
upgrade their home. This could be somebody
4:04
immigrating to the the city who moved here for work and now
4:09
needs, you know, a new place. What are the specific unique
4:11
problems that you are solving for your client?
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And it's more than just a place to live.
4:16
Whoever knows the client best wins the sale.
4:19
When you know your client inside and out better than they do what
4:22
they're going to want, why they're considering this, this
4:25
build, whatever it may be, you will then win the sale because
4:29
people want to do business that they know trust like and that
4:33
gets them. They will have no problem paying
4:35
you additional for the right fit of builder that you will be.
4:39
Next is building a lead generation machine.
4:41
So this we're going to go into a bit more detail later on as far
4:44
as the nuts and bolts, but essentially building a lead
4:46
generation machine. You wanna have multi channel
4:48
marketing. So you should be on all the
4:50
major social media channels, e-mail, website, SEO, paid
4:54
advertising. You don't need to do it all at
4:57
once, but that is where you need to get to.
4:59
You need to be omnipresent in the marketplace though, that
5:02
people, no matter where they are, they can find you and
5:05
you're drawing from a very large crowd and then qualifying them
5:08
down to those specific clients that you want to work with and
5:12
who are going to be a great fit for you.
5:14
This lead generation machine, it's something that I have
5:17
worked on consistently for decades now.
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And there is really no end to the amount of leads or the
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quality of leads that you can get.
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And it's really about consistency and putting the
5:28
right building blocks in place, which I'm going to get to in
5:31
just a moment, and then operating from abundant leads
5:33
and better clients. When you're not scared about
5:35
your next lead, when you've got work lined out for, you know,
5:39
six months, one year plus, you're in this mentality and
5:42
you're able to take on jobs that are profitable, that are a good
5:46
fit for you. If you're in that place where
5:49
you're still scrounging to get work, every job is like a must
5:53
win for you in order to keep the lights on and keep all your guys
5:56
busy and all this stuff. You are naturally going to
5:59
undersell yourself because you are in a, you know, a bad
6:02
position as far as like nothing. You need to negotiate with the
6:05
clients, but you don't have a lot of room to let leads slide
6:09
if those clients you're not willing to pay you what you are
6:13
worth As a builder. If you're used to competing on
6:16
price and you try to scale up like I mentioned before, you're
6:19
gonna have additional overhead. You're gonna have to hire other
6:21
managers and all these things and it's going to be a breaking
6:24
point because the overhead you have now is probably not
6:27
sufficient for a larger company that you want to grow in the
6:30
future. So you've got to get that
6:31
pricing rate and giving highest quality service and raising your
6:35
prices. So reinvesting things that
6:37
actually matter. So specific marketing channels,
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lead Gen. channels, setting up systems around marketing, all
6:43
this stuff like really be strategic with what you're
6:45
investing so you get the maximum ROI and then over delivering to
6:49
clients with the experience they provide.
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Everyone says we do great work. We really care about our
6:54
clients. Every contractor in your area is
6:57
going to say that. I've, I've yet to meet a
6:59
contractor that says we provide lousy experience, we do a
7:02
horrible job and our quality sucks.
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You need to go above and beyond that.
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And I'm going to be sharing with you exactly which pieces to get
7:09
in place for this, but essentially setting expectations
7:12
really early with clients so that they know what to expect.
7:14
Having a system for onboarding system, so they're always
7:18
informed, so they're taken care of, so they can raise, you know,
7:21
flags if, if something looks out of place or there's issues, they
7:24
get a good response. You're leading them every step
7:27
of the way. They're never wondering what's
7:29
going on. They're never concerned about am
7:32
I spending too much money or why, why do I have these extra
7:35
costs? You need a specific system to
7:37
make sure they experience is amazing for your clients because
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that's going to turn into referrals, more reviews,
7:42
testimonials, and that's what's gonna keep your engine going.
7:44
The next part of increasing margins is setting up
7:48
automations. There's a lot of automations
7:50
available to you that can get set up to take care of admin, to
7:55
do messaging, financials, a big part of financials that can all
7:58
be automated save you easily 10 plus hours a week for you.
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Never mind if you have an admin staff and these other people
8:04
with AI nowadays, you can really get a lot more production and a
8:08
lot done that takes it off your plate.
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You don't have to think about it, so you can focus on what
8:13
actually matters instead of these small like admin tasks.
8:16
They eat up your time, but they also eat up your profit margins.
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When you've got all these people or things happening that are
8:23
manual processes when they could easily automate it and then get
8:26
a good project management software.
8:28
The project management software, it'll help you all the steps the
8:32
way from leads to estimating, running the project to the
8:35
financials. Really utilize your project
8:37
management software to complete software build from when a
8:41
client comes in as a lead all the way to when you close them
8:45
out and your, your follow-ups. You know, six months, one year
8:48
after the project is complete for, for warranty or touching
8:50
base or whatever. Really utilize the whole extent
8:54
of your project management software.
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It'll save you a ton of time. It'll make your projects more
8:58
efficient. It'll make your business more
8:59
efficient, save you money. Next thing is standardizing your
9:03
estimating process. I grew my construction company
9:06
extremely quick and I did not have great margins.
9:10
When I started scaling my business and I felt the pain
9:13
really hard go to a year after we really grew, tripled
9:17
revenues, had the lead Gen. thing figured out and did not
9:20
really understand the estimating financial side of my business at
9:23
the level that I should have and it hurt me essentially.
9:26
I realized that wow, we grew massively as a business, but we
9:30
were having cash flow issues all because I didn't have the right
9:33
estimating setup and the financial checks and balances.
9:37
So the thing with estimating is you should have three different
9:40
types of estimates. You start with the ballpark.
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Ballpark is a little bit off the cuff, back of the napkin sort of
9:45
math. And essentially this is when
9:47
someone calls you and ask you how much is this going to cost?
9:50
I want to build a new home in, you know, this location.
9:53
How much is it going to cost me? You are doing square footage
9:56
takeoff pricing depending on where you're located.
9:59
But essentially from that you can already give them some sort
10:02
of a cost. You may go into a little bit
10:04
more detail where maybe you're taking account, OK, this is like
10:08
the living space. They want a garage so you can do
10:10
a little bit of adding on, but you're just doing like a really
10:13
big bulk estimate actually. Then you let them know, hey,
10:16
your new home is gonna cost you about 1 to $1.2 million.
10:19
Is this within your budget? Is a feasible, is it worth, you
10:22
know, getting into a more rough type of budget with more details
10:26
and, and itemized? And then from there you can
10:28
quickly filter those clients who are like, wow, no, like we work
10:32
so open to spend, you know, 700,000.
10:34
It's like, well, you know, we can build a house for that, but
10:37
we may need to be a little creative with a few things and
10:40
maybe the size may have to be adjusted.
10:43
Let's get you, you know, talking with our designer or whatever.
10:46
So you try to move them forward if you can.
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But if they're way out to lunch, like they're like, you know,
10:50
we've only got 400,000 to invest and you're like, I can't build a
10:53
home for under, you know, 500, then maybe they're not a good
10:56
client for you. That's kind of the big filter.
10:58
If they pass the ballpark and they're like, yeah, that seems
11:00
reasonable. Or that's, you know, close maybe
11:02
a little bit more we want to spend, but within reason.
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Then you move on to a rough budget.
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A rough budget is going to be you're going to do takeoffs and
11:09
you're going to have bulk sort of pricing, but now you're
11:12
providing an itemized quote and typically you're using a
11:15
template. You should have like a new home
11:17
file template or if you remodels like remodel template and you're
11:20
just plugging in essentially their square footage is your
11:25
pricing catalog pricing database prices.
11:28
You're not spending a ton of time should take one to two
11:31
hours. Maybe you're not putting hours
11:33
and hours and hours into providing a free estimate to
11:35
them. The ballparks free.
11:37
Typically the rough budget is going to be free and then you
11:40
can give them a nice itemized budget.
11:42
I like to use the word budget more than estimate with with
11:45
clients because we're budgeting the project.
11:47
It's not a final end thing. And then once they have that in
11:50
place, it's pretty clear you're probably within 1015% of the
11:54
final cost of their project. If it still looks good to them,
11:57
that's when you move them into a pre construction agreement.
12:00
And the preconstruction agreement is quintessential must
12:04
have. You need to have some sort of
12:05
preconstruction agreement in place to then move the client
12:08
into the planning phase of the project.
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This is where a lot of builders lose a lot of money and end up
12:14
competing with everybody else in your market.
12:17
You need to be able to sell like low ticket, maybe 5010 thousand
12:20
dollar retainer to the client, move into preconstruction
12:23
agreement. And then you can charge for
12:24
estimating, can charge for design, you can charge for
12:26
scheduling, anything that goes into permitting, planning,
12:30
anything like that. And then you can go into the
12:32
drill down estimate. The drill down is where you
12:34
start tendering it out, you bid it out, you do selections with
12:37
the client, all this stuff. So as you can see, one leads
12:40
into the next and there's this natural easy progression.
12:43
And then by the time you get to the construction agreement,
12:45
they've already spent, you know, 1020 thousand with you
12:48
potentially. They've got plans, they've got
12:49
to schedule, they've worked with their team, they've had
12:52
hopefully an amazing experience with you so far.
12:54
And they know exactly where the pricing is at because you're
12:56
giving them iterative budgets slowly narrowing down.
13:00
By the time you get to construction agreement, they
13:02
know exactly what's happening. There's there's no guesswork at
13:04
that point. So a few other things with
13:06
standardizing you're estimating process is job costing should
13:09
have job costing in place so that you know the actual amount
13:13
spent to what you estimated so that you can then go back and
13:17
see are we $10,000? We're on framing, they were
13:20
under $5000 on electrical. So you can always be adjusting
13:24
and realizing where inefficiencies are, where you
13:27
need to adjust your numbers and things like that.
13:29
So you've got this feedback loop of ever increasingly better
13:33
estimating. You make your money when you
13:35
estimate a project. By the time you get into
13:36
production, you've already estimated, you already priced it
13:39
and you you can't really make money at that stage.
13:42
Like that is where you get paid the money, estimate a project
13:45
and then sell it at a high enough margin.
13:48
You know, when you go into production, you're going to make
13:50
that that money. Even if you know no estimates
13:53
perfect and you go over budget a little bit, you can still have
13:56
healthy margins and you have an accurate estimating so that you
13:59
can make money on the other side.
14:01
This is like why it's so important to get estimating
14:04
right. You should have good templates
14:05
in place. As I mentioned, it avoids things
14:07
being missed or lost in the shuffle.
14:10
And you know, if I know the pain, I'm sure you know the pain
14:13
of doing a project, getting into it and realizing I forgot some
14:17
small thing, but it ends up costing, you know, thousands or
14:20
10s of thousands of dollars because it wasn't in the
14:23
software. I like to use my project
14:25
management software for estimating simply because then
14:28
it carries into everything else and it's all kind of inclusive
14:30
in one. Depending on the type of project
14:33
management software, again, I'd like to pick ones that have the
14:37
takeoff software included with the project management software.
14:42
So it's all in one and it's really easy.
14:44
You should have your cost code so you can do proper job costing
14:47
templates and pricing database. Those are really the big key
14:50
components, creative pricing database programs.
14:52
Now we're even kind of sync with, you know, Lowe's or Home
14:55
Depot or whatever to pull in pricing as needed or, or you've
14:59
got these Rs means or one build all these different ones that
15:03
can pull pricing in that are current to you and and your
15:07
locality potential mistakes you can be aware of.
15:09
So there's a few like I'm constantly seeing one.
15:12
Probably the biggest 1 is not having supervising or project
15:15
management cost as an line item in your estimate.
15:19
The project is going to take management time.
15:21
So you need to have project management in your estimate.
15:25
And the way to calculate this is, let's say you've got a new
15:29
home build. It's gonna take six months.
15:31
Then you're gonna go, OK, we've got about 20 working days per
15:34
month. And on average, a project
15:35
manager is probably gonna spend about two hours managing a new
15:39
home build every day. So then you can just two hours a
15:42
day per month and you just extrapolate.
15:45
I don't know what that is, but not my, you know, calculator hat
15:48
on right now. But let's say 300 hours, that's
15:51
going to take to manage this build 300 hours times $100.00 an
15:55
hour or 110 or 20 or 90, whatever your, your project
15:59
management rate is, that should be on your estimate.
16:02
And the reason you wanna have this is first, so you know what
16:04
you're getting paid for project management.
16:05
Second, so you can hire project manager.
16:08
Hiring a project manager should not be eating away at your
16:10
profit margin. It should be a line item on your
16:14
estimate that the client is paying for the management of
16:16
their project that they're building their house, right?
16:19
So second thing is then you can do the job costing because if
16:22
you don't calculate by hour and you've got a project manager,
16:25
you're paying them typically by hour, unless their salary, which
16:28
is not typical and they should be clocking in to specific jobs.
16:32
They're keeping track. And at the end of the, the
16:34
build, you can see, hey, they spent 250 hours on this new home
16:38
build. Great.
16:38
We actually calculated 300. So we're ahead and we can, you
16:42
know, maybe we can reduce that on the next one or maybe it's
16:44
just an awesome project manager or whatever it is.
16:46
But then you can do that, that feedback loop.
16:48
So that's the one of the big mistakes I see.
16:50
Another big mistake I I see with with estimating constantly is
16:54
the markup. I like to see all the line items
16:57
calculated pretty accurately with a little bit of room on
17:01
top. I see this quite often where
17:03
your electricians quoted you a job, let's say $15,000 and then
17:07
you put it in your estimate at $20,000.
17:10
And then you you apply your your markup, which is maybe 20% and
17:14
you know that you've got that 25% buffer essentially on their
17:18
price in your estimate. The problem with this is when
17:21
you do that actuals to to budget it later on, it makes it look
17:26
like you're always sort of ahead and you don't really know what
17:28
percentage you've over calculated on specific line
17:31
items. So you've gotta make this make
17:33
sense for you. If you have two or three bids on
17:35
electrician, the highest one is you know, 15,000 and the lowest
17:39
one is 12,000. You might put that line item for
17:43
like 16,000 and then increase your your markup on your
17:47
estimates. Now markup and margin are not
17:49
the same thing. And then figure out how much
17:51
overhead expenses you have. Probably 15 is about average.
17:55
So if you've got 15% margin, that's actually a 20% markup.
17:59
It's just how the numbers work out.
18:00
So if you are marking up 20% and your margin of overhead is 15%,
18:06
you are not making any money if anything goes over and you end
18:09
up paying more than what you estimated for the build of your
18:12
project. And This is why you may get to
18:13
an end of a project and and you look at around like should have
18:16
profited like $200,000 on this job with my markup though
18:19
realizing that all got eaten up by your overhead.
18:23
So that's why it's very important to know your overhead.
18:26
The third one is not having someone else check your
18:28
estimate, your top foreman or if you've got a site manager,
18:32
somebody else in your business should be double checking your
18:36
estimates because you are so close to the action and you may
18:39
not see things that other people would and they may ask questions
18:42
about the estimate that you wouldn't ask yourself.
18:45
So having just a quick check with someone, 10 minutes or so,
18:48
and that can help a world of wonder.
18:50
Use a I loaded into tragic T Gemini, whatever it may be.
18:54
Have a prompt, you know, is there anything I'm missing,
18:56
anything I should be aware of because everything looked clear
18:59
here and how can I improve this? Don't rush this process.
19:02
I see this and I get it because you're busy.
19:05
You got clients calling you, you've got parking to take care
19:07
of. Take the extra 1015 minutes just
19:10
to review it, look through it and make sure things are
19:12
accurate because a 1015 minute review could save you 10s of
19:16
thousands of dollars. And I don't know too many people
19:19
that are making, you know, $40,000 an hour as, as a wage.
19:23
I know there's a lot. And this first lever is
19:26
definitely one of the big ones because the margins are so
19:28
incredibly important and you need to run your business if you
19:31
making business decisions based on the financials, based on the
19:34
numbers. The last thing on the profit
19:38
margins is systemized cash flow. We've talked about the
19:41
estimating and the lead Jan and all that stuff.
19:43
Now it's the actual cash that's coming in your business and how
19:46
to manage your finances. The way to do this efficiently
19:50
is called the Profit First method.
19:52
It's a book by Mike Michalowicz. And essentially you have revenue
19:55
coming into your business. So it's $100,000 this month that
19:59
that goes into your bank account.
20:00
That $100,000 should then be distributed to other bank
20:04
accounts that you have. So typically you you're going to
20:06
have four to five business bank accounts.
20:09
You've got one that collects all the money and then from there
20:11
you're distributing to profit. So you're going to take that
20:14
$100,000, you're going to take $5000 out and put it into your
20:18
profit account. So that's 5% profit set aside.
20:20
Then you're going to take owners paid.
20:22
This could be 10%. So you're gonna take $10,000
20:25
from the $100,000, put it into your owners pay account.
20:29
This is what you're going to pay yourself, whether that's no
20:31
paycheck or salary or, or whatever.
20:33
And then you're gonna gonna have taxes you're gonna take out and
20:36
put it into your tax account. And then what you're left with
20:39
goes into your expense account. And this is what you're gonna
20:42
run your business off of. So this is the remaining money
20:44
is going to go towards expenses, materials, labour overhead,
20:48
whatever needs to get paid from there.
20:50
The reason you do this allocation is because you don't
20:53
have to wait for your bookkeeping or financial
20:55
statements to know where your money is.
20:57
You know, I've got my taxes covered.
20:59
I've got my profit covered. I got high salary covered and
21:02
then this is how much expenses we have.
21:04
So if your expense accounts getting too low and you're like,
21:07
and I'm running out of cash, you know that your allocations are
21:11
are not correct. So maybe you only have to take
21:14
like 2% profit for the time being and then work your way up
21:17
to 5%. Maybe your owners pay needs to
21:19
be reduced. That is how you can quickly kind
21:21
of gauge of like how is my cash flow doing by having these
21:24
different bank accounts tracking every dollar in and out.
21:26
This is not a difficult kind of concept, but it's a very
21:30
difficult thing to get set up. So you know, reach out to us,
21:34
this is what we do. We work with clients to set all
21:36
these systems up for them and help them scale their
21:37
businesses. But as far as like tracking
21:40
every dollar and job costing, when you've done the estimate
21:42
correctly in your project management software that gets
21:45
moved into a project. Now all the expenses from your
21:50
accounting software can be QuickBooks 0, Sage, whatever
21:53
you're using, that information that is cost of goods sold gets
21:58
pulled into your project management software and then it
22:01
gets allocated to the projects. So you know, every week, let's
22:04
say your project manager is gonna go through there and this
22:07
expense is for this project for framing, this expense is for
22:10
this project, you know, finishing, so on and so forth.
22:13
And they're going to categorize everything.
22:14
And then your project management software, you can essentially
22:17
run a report that shows this is how much we spent today for this
22:20
and this and this on every single project.
22:23
So that is the idea, managing change orders effectively as you
22:26
scale, the complexity is going to go up.
22:28
So if you are already a little bit unorganized, people don't
22:31
know what's going on, you don't have good training, change
22:33
orders are being processed properly, you're losing money on
22:36
projects. If you try to scale, you're in
22:39
for a world of hurt. You really need to get things
22:42
kind of tuned in. Doesn't have to be perfect, but
22:44
things have to be clicking because as you scale, if you
22:47
having problems now, those problems are just going to be
22:50
amplified as you grow. So a good change order process
22:54
that's effective and efficient, making sure that there's not
22:56
extra work being done on site that you don't know about or is
22:59
it isn't being charged to the client.
23:00
That should be profit killers using job cost accounting
23:03
software part. So as I mentioned with the job
23:05
costing, there are profit killers that just eat away at
23:09
your, your margins and your profitability.
23:11
And having your numbers in place and being able to look at those
23:14
every week or month is gonna really alert you to, hey, why
23:18
are we spending so much on this or why do we still have this
23:21
subscription? Always looking at how can we
23:22
reduce costs and save some money on kind of the overhead or the,
23:28
the project management side of the business.
23:30
Last thing we talk about is as far as cash flow, there should
23:33
be probably quarterly, at least twice per year.
23:36
Look at all your suppliers and and go back to them and see if
23:39
you can negotiate, you know, discounts, free delivery, longer
23:43
payment terms, whatever you can do, especially large suppliers.
23:45
If you're spending no 10s, hundreds of thousands of dollars
23:49
on materials or purchases from these suppliers, see what kind
23:53
of contractor discounts they can apply you and see if you can,
23:57
you know, increase that over time.
23:58
You never know, It's worth asking about.
24:01
Not that you want to just get the cheapest price or, or try to
24:03
like do something shifty with, with all your suppliers and, and
24:07
you hope just beat them down to the the the smallest price
24:10
possible. But you never know, there may be
24:12
new programs or, or discounts or they, you know, things that they
24:15
can do. Obviously, if you're giving them
24:17
a lot of business, they're more likely to stick with you and
24:20
provide better pricing for you. Now, one of your basic expenses
24:25
as a business is your labour. Your labour expense is going to
24:28
be one of the largest parts of expenses of business and it's
24:32
one of the hardest things to maybe conceptualize of how
24:35
efficiently you are performing with labour.
24:37
Materials are pretty easy. You know, with your team, you
24:40
really want to make sure you know they're happy and they're
24:42
staying productive and you're providing all the support and
24:45
training and everything you can to make sure that they can do
24:48
their job and they can be consistent with it.
24:50
I'm sure you have those guys will drink a Red Bull and
24:52
they'll go crazy and they get a lot done in a day, but then you
24:56
know, they get a paycheck and and they call in sick on Monday
24:58
or whatever, right? So your team, it's really about
25:01
efficiency over the long haul and someone who's can be
25:04
consistent and stick with your business, tested your teams
25:07
training, leadership, communication so that they can
25:10
get more work done so that they know this is a professional
25:12
environment. We, this is huge priorities for
25:15
yourself, for your team. I'm sure you've, you've run into
25:18
these people that are super detailed oriented and they take
25:21
forever to do anything because they got to get it perfect.
25:23
They got to talk to 10 different people and watch 5 different
25:27
YouTube videos in order to know how to do this one little
25:29
specific task. So making sure that your
25:32
leadership, I understand sometimes things get crazy, but
25:35
these are the top things that I need you to be accountable for.
25:38
Making sure employees show up on site is your number one
25:41
priority. Second is make sure the
25:43
subgrades know what they're doing.
25:44
Third is like having materials ordered two days or a week ahead
25:47
of time. So things can get unorganized
25:49
and scattered. And that's where everything sort
25:52
of seems to kind of drag to a halt.
25:54
And if you've ever had a project like that, we're just nothing
25:57
seems to be getting done. What actually is important From
25:59
there, divide your company into task.
26:01
Each matter taking on a clear rules.
26:03
This is another thing that really hurts margins is when
26:06
people aren't really sure of their role or their job.
26:09
Inevitably, you have stronger employees that start taking on
26:12
the work of weaker employees and weaker employees that just start
26:15
to slack off because someone else is taking care of it or
26:17
they're like, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be
26:18
doing, right? So having that clarity and
26:21
structuring your business provides clear communication to
26:24
everybody. This is what you should be
26:25
doing. This is what we expect of you.
26:27
This is how things get done around here.
26:29
The last thing we mentioned on productive and happy team is
26:31
before giving feedback, compliments, something they've
26:34
done well, it's very easy to say, hey, why did you mess this
26:36
up again or don't do this. This is how you should be doing
26:39
that. If you see something good, say
26:41
it. Hey, I really liked that you've,
26:43
you know, been showing up regularly.
26:44
You're always here a little bit earlier setting up the tools and
26:47
stuff before more than the guys. Just wanted to let you know, I
26:49
really appreciate your effort, right?
26:50
Saying the good stuff for feedback.
26:52
And that way when you do have feedback of something that's a
26:55
little negative or room for improvement, they don't take it
26:58
as harshly because you kind of built up that that strong
27:01
relationship of the good things that they've done.
27:02
And if you need help implementing these same
27:04
strategies that helped my clients scale to 5 million a
27:08
year, click the first link in the description to apply to work
27:12
directly with me now. Lever #2 increased deal flow and
27:17
you're in for such a good time on this video.
27:19
Like we are going nonstop all out everything how to scale your
27:23
construction business. I hate to see it contractors,
27:26
you've been in business too 5/10/20 years sometimes and
27:29
you're still just stuck on the day-to-day wearing all the hats,
27:32
firefighting and you can just, you never seem to kind of get
27:36
ahead or break free of that cycle with deal flow and
27:40
businesses. You always want to have much
27:42
higher demand than you can facilitate.
27:45
And this is where a lot of contractors get it backwards
27:47
because they're thinking, oh, I need to produce like a lot of
27:50
work in order to make more money.
27:52
And if I get, you know, 10 leads, I need to do 10 projects.
27:56
You're always trying to just throw as much work and get work
27:59
done as fast as you can instead of realizing you want demand
28:04
really high and you are not going to meet that demand.
28:06
If you have 10 people come to you.
28:08
We want you to build our, our brand new home for us.
28:11
Your thought process, maybe I'm going to build maybe four of
28:13
these homes because you're gonna take on the four best clients
28:16
who are best suited for you with the highest margins that are
28:19
willing to spend what you are worth as as a business.
28:22
And that's how you get in that abundance mindset.
28:24
That's it. You want a lot of deals, a lot
28:27
of leads, qualified leads so that you can pick the cream of
28:31
the crop. So sistant deal flow is backbone
28:33
for scaling construction companies because you need all
28:35
that demand. And then when you scale, you can
28:38
bring up production and because your demand is so high, you know
28:41
you're not going to fall off as well.
28:43
This is another common roadblock or pitfall.
28:46
You start to scale, you get these ten homes that come
28:48
through, you build them, you hire like a project manager, 2
28:51
project managers, and then all of a sudden demand sort of
28:54
tapers off, you know, seasonally or economy or whatever.
28:57
And now it's like, oh, I gotta, you know, layoff this one of my
29:00
project managers or, you know, we're just trying to stay busy.
29:03
Your margins start to shrink, you start to sell, try to sell
29:06
jobs and you got this downward spiral which you want to avoid.
29:09
And by doing that, that's why you need to be able to increase
29:13
your production, but only when demand is at a super high level.
29:16
So how do we do that? You don't need a big marketing
29:18
budget because more leads does not equal more revenue like I
29:21
mentioned. Instead, you need to increase
29:22
deal flow the right way. This is something that we work
29:25
on early on with clients as well because we want to make sure
29:28
that we're just, you know, front loading their pipeline
29:31
essentially with good quality leads.
29:33
Multi channel marketing, as I mentioned earlier, you want to
29:35
be on all of the different social media channels, website,
29:39
SEO, e-mail, paid advertising, everything and anything you can
29:43
do in marketing you should be doing.
29:45
Now you might say that's crazy, like I'm never gonna have enough
29:48
time. I'm gonna need a full time
29:49
marketer. I don't mean that you need to be
29:51
active on all those different marketing channels, but you
29:54
should at least have the infrastructure set up.
29:56
So you should have an account, you should have your profile.
29:59
You should at least understand it and have some some basic
30:02
elements in place. Because as long as you can get
30:04
your infrastructure set up, you're already probably much
30:06
ahead of most of the rest of competition around you.
30:09
And then you can also start to see what works.
30:11
This certain thing is working for you.
30:13
You double down on it, you spend more time or more money on it.
30:16
There's other thing is not really working, you just leave
30:18
it alone and don't spend too much time on it, right?
30:20
So that is why you wanna be in these different areas because
30:23
different types of marketing will produce different results
30:25
and when you find those good results, you want to double
30:28
down. So you're kind of like you're
30:29
fishing, you know, you got a couple of of hooks, you know, in
30:32
the water and if you find big fish in this one area, then
30:34
that's where you're going to put more referral network as well.
30:38
When I talk to builders, a lot of the times where your best
30:40
leads come, it's from referrals. Where the most of your leads
30:43
come referrals. So what is a referral strategy?
30:48
I don't know. I asked them for referrals.
30:50
My clients, you should have a referral system that is bringing
30:54
in more referrals for you and facilitating that.
30:57
How I like to do this is we provided what to expect document
31:00
to new clients before they start the build.
31:02
They just outlines all the stuff to do with, you know, how the
31:05
building goes down and information about the company
31:07
and one of the sections is referrals.
31:09
If you know your neighbor, friend, uncle, cousin, aunt,
31:12
whoever is planning to do new home build, remodel, whatever,
31:16
let us know about it. One of the best compliments we
31:18
get from clients all the time is that they refer their friends
31:20
and family to us. If this so happens that it comes
31:23
up in a conversation, please send us an e-mail with their
31:26
name or text us. Tell them specifically your
31:29
clients how you want them to refer people to you because the
31:33
last thing you want to do is for them to have a conversation at a
31:36
party or something. Yeah, we're thinking about
31:38
building a new house next week. Oh yeah, we're working with with
31:40
such and such builder. They're really good and nothing
31:42
happens from it. Right.
31:43
So you want to preempt that, put the seed in their mind.
31:46
And then midway through the project, we're going to do a
31:49
little bit of a feedback review. If they're happy, if, if things
31:52
are going well, then again, ask them, hey, you know, anybody
31:55
else that that maybe looking at doing a similar project like
31:58
this? And then every six months to one
32:00
year, you should be getting on the phone and calling all of
32:03
your past clients. How's it going?
32:04
How are the kids? Is everything still going good
32:07
in your house? Any issues with the work we did?
32:09
We are now booking into, you know, next year.
32:11
If you have friends or family, anybody who's considering this,
32:14
I would love to kind of get them ahead of the curve because
32:16
things get really busy. It's always kind of like you've
32:19
got this use this network of people that could refer to you.
32:22
And then of course your architects, designers, Realtors,
32:26
all these types of, you know, business professionals.
32:29
That referral network is so important and you spend all this
32:31
money on advertising or marketing on social media to get
32:36
a lead that lead to then turn into another one, which turned
32:39
into another one. So that you're always growing
32:41
your network and your your client base.
32:43
And that's how you increase your deal flow.
32:45
The purpose is you're growing your lead base and your referral
32:49
base and that is going to help you scale your business and what
32:52
you can rely on as a great foundation to grow and scale.
32:55
Third thing of Metropoll multi channel marketing, implementing
32:57
CRM. So how do you remember to follow
32:59
up with these people? How do you remember all this
33:01
stuff? How do you remember how many
33:02
kids they have or if they've got a dog or if they're went away on
33:05
vacation? A good CRM contract, All of this
33:08
stuff you can send out e-mail marketing, you can do social
33:11
media posting. We've got one that we've
33:13
developed Rapid Lead CRM is what it's called.
33:16
We provide it to our clients and essentially you can create a
33:19
post, it'll push it out to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, a
33:22
lot of automations that can go into a good CRM.
33:25
So if someone calls you or fills out the form on your website, it
33:28
you know, all that information should pull in and it should
33:31
send off automatic emails, have scheduling, calendars.
33:35
There's so much that goes into a good CRM and a lot of builders
33:39
are missing this. You probably have a good project
33:42
management software that manages the project as you're
33:44
estimating, maybe has a little bit of like you can put in a
33:47
lead, but they're missing the whole marketing and lead Gen.
33:50
part of it. That's why we produced our own
33:52
and provided to clients is because I knew that piece was
33:54
missing. And that is what, you know,
33:56
pulls in the leads and captures all the information and then
34:00
nurtures them. It's another huge thing with
34:02
this increased deal flow is if you're always relying on new
34:05
leads coming in, you're spending way too much money and time and
34:08
your lead quality is going to be super low.
34:10
Whereas when you can pull in those leads, yes, you want a
34:12
good flow of leads coming in, But when you can nurture them,
34:15
because again, they may not be looking for a place right now
34:17
and maybe one year or two years out, you need that e-mail
34:20
sequences and the nurturing through social media and, and
34:23
campaigns and all this stuff. It's a very warm conversation.
34:26
They already see your value instead of just clicking some
34:30
random Facebook ad and like calling you, right?
34:32
Because at that point they don't know you, you're just one of all
34:35
the rest of them. And then paid ads, Paid ads are
34:38
the last sort of piece of the puzzle to marketing strategy.
34:43
Paid advertising is like fuel for the fire, but you need the
34:46
fire to be going already. And it doesn't have to be huge,
34:50
but you should have like all your social channels it up.
34:52
You should have a good website that can capture leads, that has
34:55
good call to actions. If your marketing is crappy and
34:58
you spend a whole bunch on on on advertising on Facebook and
35:01
things like this or Google, they're gonna land on your
35:03
website, they're gonna bounce because it's like this looks
35:05
unprofessional or they, you know, they can't fill out the
35:07
form properly or nobody like calls them or follows up with
35:10
them. So you need a good marketing and
35:13
outreach program so that you're paid advertising is actually
35:17
being worth it. And they're converting into
35:19
clients at A at a higher rate. When I started in my
35:22
construction business, I did not like marketing.
35:24
I didn't know how to do marketing.
35:26
And now that I've gotten good at it, it really is.
35:30
It can be fun. Once you set up the system and
35:32
things are clicking, life becomes a joy.
35:35
Like it just becomes so much better.
35:37
So if you're really like now, like oh so stressed out, there's
35:40
so much to do. A big part of that is going to
35:43
be because your systems just aren't up to up to where they
35:45
should be or you've been going about it the wrong way.
35:48
And I'm going to be laying out everything A-Z like I mentioned.
35:50
So a few red flags with new clients and deal who is
35:54
detecting clients that are focused on making you lose are
35:57
unresponsive or indecisive. You often probably get this kind
36:00
of Spidey sense when someone calls you or you talk to someone
36:02
that they're just looking for the lowest price.
36:05
Husband is always traveling and the wife is always busy with
36:08
something. I just realized going in that
36:10
sometimes letting clients slip makes room for the clients that
36:15
are a good fit. So don't be afraid to kind of
36:17
either raise prices on on clients that you think are going
36:20
to be difficult. Raise your price a bit because
36:22
it's going to take more management time.
36:23
And if they go with someone else, great.
36:25
Don't worry about those. Let them go.
36:27
Not starting overly complicated designs or projects that are
36:30
outside your core expertise. So it can, it can be very
36:33
appealing to work on that huge project or that, that big, you
36:37
know, house or, or whatever. But if it's super complicated
36:41
and something way out of what you've done before, it's best to
36:44
just let them know like, hey, this is a little bit beyond what
36:47
our business is ready for at this moment.
36:49
And they will really appreciate you for that.
36:51
And when they do have projects that are more in line with like
36:53
the type that you do now, they're gonna go to you because
36:56
they trust you. They know that you're gonna tell
36:58
them straight up, if you can handle this project, you wanna
37:01
make sure that the the service is amazing.
37:03
Yes, you should be increasing your job size and you should be
37:06
challenging yourself to do, you know, better builds.
37:08
But just realizing that more complex builds does not mean a
37:12
better build. The more consistent your
37:13
projects can be, the better it easier it is to create systems
37:17
and have your people trained because now they're doing kind
37:21
of the same type of build or host over and over and over
37:24
again instead of like always super different super custom.
37:28
See if you can maybe refer it to someone else and get a referral
37:31
fee or something like that. Or they can show you the ropes
37:33
and maybe bring you along on a project.
37:35
I've seen a lot of projects go sideways.
37:37
Builders reputations take a nosedive because they
37:40
overextended themselves essentially on on a huge
37:42
project. So now we're going to go through
37:44
the deal flow, same deal securing process.
37:46
I teach my clients who are doing over $10 million in revenue.
37:50
This is part of the sales process that I learned working
37:53
in $100 million construction company.
37:55
So the first thing is parking systems that 100 million
37:58
companies use to track 5 million plus dollar projects.
38:01
You really need to go back to the drawing board on the
38:03
branding and niche. So that's where you start.
38:06
And then your marketing needs to be centred around that.
38:09
So you're messaging everything on your website should look,
38:11
doesn't even have to be like super high end, but you want to
38:14
be looked at a quality builder. That means if you are home
38:17
builder, all the pictures on your website should be a
38:19
finished beautiful homes. New leads go on your website.
38:22
They don't want to see a stick frame building or a roughed in
38:26
building or a pile of dirt with a bunch of excavators.
38:29
You know that's not what they want.
38:32
Everything from the messaging should speak to that ideal
38:34
client. So if it's professionals that
38:36
make over $200,000 a year, you need to know how they talk, what
38:40
college universities have been to all that stuff to be very
38:44
aligned so that by the time you get into sales conversation,
38:47
they're already very warm and they know you qualify those
38:50
leads with questions on project start time, budget and location.
38:53
So you're going to get a lead. It's whether it's through the
38:55
form of your website or they call you, your secretary, or if
38:59
it's yourself answering the phone should have a list of
39:02
qualifying questions and you should be asking them on the
39:05
phone and filling it in. You know, when are you starting?
39:07
What's project size, what's your budget?
39:09
What's, what's the location? Have you worked with a builder
39:12
before? Have you have you contacted
39:13
other builders? Do you have plans already?
39:16
And there should be a bunch of qualifying questions.
39:18
And that's why you do that ballpark budget.
39:20
So you can easily tell is this going to be someone I want to
39:22
work with or not? And by qualifying those leads,
39:25
you're going to spend your time on the ones that really matter,
39:28
a free consultation that build report and feasibility.
39:31
There's a balance between, you know, free and being
39:34
unprofitable. Essentially with clients, there
39:37
is a certain amount of goodwill and face that you want to save.
39:40
I know there is, you know, coaches, gurus, builders out
39:43
there that are like, Nope, I always charge for estimate.
39:46
If you're getting like unlimited leads and you don't want to grow
39:49
your business the whole time, then maybe you can continue to
39:51
do that. But typically spending a couple
39:53
hours for a new client after you've gone through the
39:56
qualifying questions. So you know they're qualified,
39:58
you know that this is affordable, this is within their
40:00
budget, this is what they want. Spending a few hours not only
40:03
gives you or them the ability to see if you're a good fit, but
40:07
you can see if they're a good fit as well before moving into
40:09
like a formal preconstruction agreement.
40:11
From there though, once you've provided that budget, you've
40:14
talked with them a little bit, you've given them a couple hours
40:16
of your time, now you want to move them into preconstruction
40:18
agreement for design, scheduling and budgeting.
40:21
So everything they need in order to make a decision and move into
40:24
the construction phase. So how much is it going to cost?
40:27
How long is it gonna take? What is it going to look like?
40:29
If you do not have in house designer, if you're, if you're
40:31
thinking like I don't, I can't really do a preconstruction
40:33
agreement because I don't have designers or architects.
40:36
Go call designers and architects and get them on your team.
40:39
You can get someone into a pre construction agreement contract.
40:42
Essentially you're just charging out whatever expenses you incur.
40:46
So if you pull in a designer, designers working with them,
40:49
anything that the designer is charging, you're essentially
40:52
charging through the client with your markup on top your project
40:55
manager yourself. If you're budgeting, if you're
40:57
calling the the city or the county to what plans or permits
41:01
through or whatever, if there's any cost associated with that,
41:04
you're just forwarding that to the client.
41:06
This just gives them that that agreement in that space so you
41:08
can start working together and move their project faster.
41:10
This is the first sale that you need to make.
41:12
You need to be able to sell pre construction agreements to your
41:15
clients. Once you can sell those, then
41:17
the construction sale and everything that comes after is a
41:21
lot easier. And it's also a lot less risk
41:23
for the client because they're only agreeing to the
41:26
preconstruction agreement, which may cost them 10 twenty $30,000.
41:30
They're not agreeing to, you know, $1 million contract to
41:33
build their home. And that's why this is so
41:34
important because if they've worked with the designer,
41:37
architect and now they're coming to your business for estimating
41:40
and they need to make $1,000,000 decision, that's a pretty big
41:43
sale. Whereas if they're making like
41:44
a, you know, ten $20,000 decision, that's a lot easier.
41:48
Once they worked with you, then that $1,000,000 decision becomes
41:51
even easier for them. And it's like a natural
41:53
progression. So from there, you're going to
41:55
provide the construction proposal.
41:56
This is where you need to get over like any opposition for the
42:00
sale. So like, oh, it's cost too much
42:02
or I'm not sure we're gonna wait on it.
42:04
All this stuff, you need to be able to move the ball forward
42:07
and get them into the construction proposal from here
42:10
after the pre construction agreement is is done.
42:12
And typically once you've got there, it's it's a pretty easy
42:15
process then to move them forward.
42:16
And then having all of this in that CRM system that I mentioned
42:20
having a consistent process so that every step of the sales, it
42:24
just feels natural for the clients like, Oh yeah,
42:27
preconstruction that that makes sense.
42:29
Oh, this is this is the the budget.
42:31
Yeah, no problem. So this is the designer, right?
42:34
OK, so you know, next week we kind of we got the schedule,
42:37
everything looks good. We're going to send you a
42:38
proposal. They always know what's
42:40
happening. They always know what's gonna
42:42
come. And your system is so dialed in
42:44
that it just feels seamless to them.
42:46
And they've they've got the meetings, they met the team,
42:48
they're, you know, reporters high.
42:50
That is when all of this kind of sales and marketing stuff.
42:53
And that's when you're you're closing ratio goes way up, your
42:56
margins go way up. The sales become easy.
42:59
You've got the marketing engine bringing all the leads, your
43:01
qualifying. So only the good ones are going
43:03
through and then you're selling at a very high rate in the
43:06
construction into the precon and then into the construction
43:08
process. And this is how you then set
43:11
yourself up to scale from there beautifully into the production
43:14
and in the systemizing of the rest of your business.
43:16
Moving on to lever #3 this one is about increasing the project
43:21
size and quality. So your average project size
43:24
you're doing, by using all three of these levers together, you
43:28
are essentially getting a compounding exponential growth
43:32
possibility because everyone increases margins and then
43:36
they're amplified by the other 3.
43:38
So that's why getting all three of these in place puts you in a
43:40
beautiful, very strong position financially and also stability
43:45
wise for consistency across your business.
43:48
So increasing project size and maintaining high quality are
43:51
important for a top notch reputation.
43:54
They can get you the right referrals, less risk and long
43:57
term business growth. So by having larger projects,
44:01
your reputation will grow and they are less risky.
44:05
Typically they're doing a whole bunch of small projects.
44:07
Having some some larger projects are managed properly of course,
44:10
and we'll position you in a great place to to be able to
44:13
scale up with less complexity. Doing you know, 100 small
44:18
projects is a lot more difficult than doing 5 or 10 large
44:22
projects. It'll have higher revenue
44:24
potential, which means more profitability potential.
44:27
Often more margin can be gained as well.
44:30
If you think you aren't at the level to take on big projects,
44:32
you are flat out wrong. You can definitely take on
44:36
larger projects. Again, you wanna be focused.
44:38
If you're a home builder, build homes, don't go off during like
44:41
a whole bunch of large commercial projects or some sort
44:44
of high rise buildings and stuff like that.
44:46
You can work your way there if that's really where you want to
44:49
go, but you're much better just trying to improve the project
44:52
size and quality and level of projects doing with inside your
44:56
niche. If you start branching off too
44:58
much and just stay on focus, you're going to cause a whole
45:01
bunch of other issues that are going to make it harder for you
45:03
to scale. Getting bigger projects.
45:06
The big one is like I mentioned before, niching down the correct
45:09
way to stand out from the mass market fire.
45:10
So you want to be very specific on the type of project, the
45:15
quality of the project, the location of the projects, the
45:18
size of the projects so that you are finding the right clients
45:21
and putting the right marketing and messaging out there.
45:23
Creating a unique value proposition.
45:25
This one can get confused with the niche unique value
45:30
proposition. This is what unique value do you
45:34
bring to the marketplace? It could be the methods that you
45:37
use, it would be the structure of your organization.
45:40
It could be the personality of yourself.
45:43
Build your, your USP around you specifically because eventually
45:46
you want to step away from the business and you want the
45:48
business stand on its own 2 feet.
45:49
Typically this is what you do uniquely that is different than
45:52
your competitors. And there's a whole analysis.
45:55
I've got like a guidebook that I help clients walk through this
45:58
essentially. But more or less you wanna
46:00
figure out what are you really good at?
46:02
What is your competition lack or what's missing in the
46:04
marketplace? And then study your competition,
46:07
study your best clients. So go back to the drawing board
46:10
as far as what are the best, you know, 5 to 10 clients have had
46:13
in the past couple of years. What similarities do they have?
46:15
Not just clients, but projects as well.
46:17
Like what's the best projects? What's different?
46:19
How can I market and be more attractive to bring in those
46:24
specific type A larger projects? Being a little bit exclusive and
46:27
selective about projects you take on and clients you take on.
46:30
It gives your business strength. It gives it that era of like
46:33
we're different and as mentioned before, clients who are in that
46:37
niche are gonna be already very much align.
46:39
Like this is the builder I want because they can see these are
46:43
all the different past projects you've done in the past year.
46:45
They're all exactly like the type of house or the size of
46:48
project or, or whatever that I've done before.
46:50
And you'll build that reputation that you are the go to for that
46:55
type of project. Now overcoming fears of your
46:57
ideal clients by showing proofs. This is another thing about
47:00
getting larger projects is when you're in a sales conversation
47:03
or a marketing conversation, before they even like contact
47:05
you on the phone or anything like that, your clients are
47:07
already making up their mind about you, your business, your
47:11
professionality. You know how much they're
47:13
willing to pay, the value that you bring to the table, even if
47:16
you haven't talked to them just from your branding and your
47:17
marketing. So that's why you need to be
47:19
able to show proof, lots of testimonials, ideally some
47:22
client videos, whatever you can do any awards that you've won,
47:25
if you have some sort of reputation and your
47:27
organizations, if you're part of the, you know, your, your cities
47:31
or counties home building association or anything like
47:34
this, whatever you can put on your website and your marketing
47:37
materials to show that you're part of the community won
47:39
awards. You're an outstanding builder.
47:42
You have all this like list of clients.
47:44
A few testimonials or reviews on your website is not enough.
47:48
You should have 1020 different reviews, videos, your Google
47:54
profile, you know, all of this stuff just adding up that you're
47:57
not just saying you're the best, but you're actually showing
48:00
we've got a huge track record of amazing work and client
48:03
experience that we've provided for clients and then over
48:06
delivering on every project so you can build a strong referral
48:08
network. You're spending all that time
48:10
and money on marketing lead Gen. creating your niche and your
48:14
website and all that stuff that I've mentioned.
48:15
Don't let it go to waste by then just, you know, getting so many
48:18
clients, every client provide amazing experience so that they
48:22
turn into another client. And that's like I mentioned you,
48:24
you grow your referral network. Now, the way that you want to do
48:27
this is by having a what to expect document early on that
48:32
tells your client everything they need to know about your
48:34
business, about your working hours, how they'll be invoiced
48:36
for how how payments get processed, things to watch out
48:39
for while the projects coming on the emotional roller coaster
48:42
that they're going to be on. Tell your clients getting
48:45
started on the project is gonna be exciting.
48:46
We're gonna be planning it. You're gonna be seeing like the
48:49
everything come into play. And then we're gonna have to go
48:51
through selections and you're gonna have to pick all the
48:53
materials might not be quite as exciting, but you're still be
48:56
going to be excited. And then you're going to have to
48:58
sign the construction contract eventually and your excitement
49:02
may go down because now it's like the rubber meets the road.
49:04
We're going to prepare you so much like before we get there,
49:07
the what to expect document should outline all this.
49:10
Don't have to go like delivered high detail, but let them know
49:12
there's going to be ups, gonna be downs, there's gonna be some
49:15
issues that probably come up like on any build.
49:17
We're gonna walk you through it. You can expect, you know, great
49:19
communication from this, all that stuff.
49:21
So that's a huge part of the client experience is pregame it
49:24
with this is what to expect every any issue that comes up on
49:28
site. If you're dealing with the same
49:29
issues from clients, like, oh, it's, you know, going over
49:31
budget or it's going over schedule or or this or that, you
49:34
should be fixing that internally, but you should also
49:36
be putting that on what to expect.
49:37
Document that. If so this happens, it can be
49:40
kind of expected in the unexpected is expected on
49:43
construction and you know, there's gonna be just it's gonna
49:45
be noisy whatever, right. So have that all in there.
49:48
The other things to make sure that you're providing an amazing
49:50
experience to your clients is weekly updates.
49:53
Every client should get an update every single week.
49:56
Typically on Fridays is the best and it doesn't have to be a long
50:00
winded e-mail of all the little things that happen, but just an
50:02
e-mail. Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Smith this
50:04
week, you know, we got passed inspection.
50:06
We installed the the installation passed and now
50:10
we're going to be moving to drywall next week.
50:12
You can expect the guys start mudding and taping.
50:15
It's just like very bullet point of what got done this week.
50:18
And it always gives them that little reassurance that hey,
50:20
stuff is getting done. I know what's going on.
50:23
The guys are on top of it. And then you have any pertinent
50:25
notes? You know, this is on back order
50:28
this inspection, this didn't pass, but we're able to get it
50:30
through. We got it taken care of
50:32
whatever, right? So this is a great way to be
50:35
proactive for your clients because now they don't have to
50:38
call you wondering what's going on or has on site.
50:40
I saw this thing, what's going, you know, what's this?
50:43
It'll limit the amount of calls you get from your client and
50:45
it'll, it'll instill trust in them that hey, it's being taken
50:49
care of. Other great things to happen to
50:50
place is for them to have access to the schedule.
50:53
Not every nitty gritty thing, but as far as the phases go,
50:57
there should be a general schedule, program, project plan
51:01
for the client to see sort of what's happening and how it's
51:04
unfolding, as well as access to their files, like their, their
51:07
plans, any, you know, legal documents, all that stuff
51:11
provide access to clients. Most people like I don't want to
51:14
give my clients too much access. I don't want to be that open
51:17
book because then it just they start digging into it and it
51:20
starts causing problems and, and all this stuff.
51:22
If you're running your construction company, right,
51:24
there's the odd time that'll happen, But most of the time
51:27
when clients trust you, you can tell, I'm sure you've had this
51:30
happen When you have that client that's like, I know you guys are
51:33
doing a good job. I trust you.
51:35
You did a great job for you know, my neighbor and I'm
51:37
building my house and they're not diving into all these little
51:40
things because they know that you're reputable, that you're
51:43
trustworthy, you're truthful. You're calling them if when good
51:47
things happen, when bad things happen.
51:49
And by giving them this information, you're saving
51:52
yourself a lot of admin time for having them calling you to ask
51:55
for it or whatever. So now moving on to the second
51:58
point here, proving project quality.
52:00
Have project quality control list.
52:03
So proper QC checklists. You should have a checklist for
52:07
starting the project for foundation framing your your
52:12
rough ends, your pre board translation.
52:15
Every major stage of the project should have a very built out
52:19
checklist of all the little things.
52:21
Is this straight? Is this square?
52:23
Is this plum? Is this installed?
52:25
All those little things that there should be check marks,
52:27
quality controls so that you know when you complete a certain
52:31
phase of the project, you're not carrying all this stuff or
52:33
things or getting forgotten about.
52:35
You felt the pain before of places painted.
52:38
You're starting to do finish carpentry and you forgot.
52:42
You know, where did we put the the low voltage wire and now you
52:46
got to go fishing around for it or oh, we forgot to install
52:48
plugs along this wall or or whatever, right.
52:50
So there's all these things behind the wall that you're not
52:53
want to have to deal with that should have been captured in
52:56
either the framing or the rough in stage and you gotta fix it
53:01
later. It cost, you know, thousands of
53:02
dollars in extra time and just looks unprofessional when
53:05
everything is said and done. So outlining quality, measuring
53:09
defects, tracking deliverables validated.
53:12
There should also be issue form submitter.
53:14
So you should have a form that your clients can fill out.
53:17
Hey, if you if you're on site and you see something that's out
53:19
of place or you think something's wrong or not being
53:21
taken care of, please write it in, go to this form and fill it
53:25
in or send us an e-mail at the very least.
53:27
And then you guys put it into a form so that all the issues can
53:31
be tracked for their specific project.
53:35
And again, you may say, well, I don't want the client like
53:38
constantly finding all this stuff wrong in my projects.
53:41
Good. Then get your guys to take care
53:43
of it so your clients don't find it.
53:45
And if your clients to fight it, how good does it look from
53:48
experience standpoint that they can point out things that they
53:51
think are wrong and they get a response quickly and it gets
53:54
taken care of. Plus, even if they're a little
53:56
bit picky, much better for you to take care of that issue when
53:59
it happens. Then later on and get to the end
54:02
of the project. I had a, a client who was
54:04
working with that we helped put in this quality control
54:07
checklists and, and standards. He got to the end of the
54:10
project, asked him like, how's, you know, housing project
54:12
managers doing with the quality control that we've been
54:14
implementing Says like, you know, I was quite surprise.
54:17
We got to the end of a project there.
54:18
There a home builder and they do lots of, you know, spec homes
54:22
and things like that. He said, I was expecting like
54:24
another 2-3 weeks on this project because we were just
54:27
kind of getting to the end of the end, end of the, the work
54:29
that was scheduled. Call my project manager.
54:31
He said clients can move in like next week.
54:34
We're almost already done. And our call was like on
54:36
Thursday, I believe. And he was just surprised.
54:38
He's like, what really you guys are done?
54:40
Like, do we have, you know, more stuff to do?
54:42
And there's like, no, we closed up the few little things that
54:45
were that were happening at the end of the project when
54:47
everything's complete and finished, cleaners are coming
54:50
through and we're done the project.
54:51
And he was so surprised because every project to date, they had
54:54
always had like 2 to three weeks of punch list items that need to
54:57
get taken care of at the end of the project.
54:59
But now they could just roll into their wrap up and pretty
55:01
much just complete it, clean it up and hand it over to the
55:04
client. The other thing about project
55:06
quality is it's not always just the, the final product.
55:10
It's also like the budgeting and the scheduling.
55:13
So how much quality do you have in the experience?
55:16
I want, I want to ingrain this in your head because the quality
55:18
is about the experience. Your company probably does great
55:21
quality work, but you provide a great quality experience and
55:25
meeting your schedules and keeping things on track and
55:28
having a dynamic schedule that if you know electrician takes an
55:31
extra 2 days that that automatically gets adjusted on
55:34
your calendar. You have buffers in there every
55:36
schedule. You shouldn't buffer a couple of
55:38
days in between large phases of the project and maybe even one
55:42
day in between your main trade. So between your foundation and
55:47
your framers buffer. They are two extra in there
55:49
because inevitably there's gonna be rain or the guys aren't gonna
55:53
show up on time or they're gonna be still stripping forms.
55:55
And then your framers show up with their, you know, framing
55:57
package and it's just a nobody likes working around each other.
56:00
So give yourself a little buffer in the schedule be, you know,
56:03
realistic that not everything's gonna go as planned.
56:06
Also in the schedule you should be having your client meetings.
56:09
So put those in there and ordering.
56:11
If your cabinets manufacturer typically takes like 5 weeks to
56:17
manufacture cabinets, then you know, when the schedule we're
56:20
installing cabinets on this day minus, you know, six weeks at
56:23
least that order needs to be in and getting produced by your
56:27
cabinet maker. Typically, I would probably give
56:29
it even more buffer, but you know, five week window for a for
56:33
ordering six or seven weeks before that, you know, you need
56:35
to order and if things get busy, it's very easy to miss that.
56:38
That's why I put it in the schedule this day I need to
56:42
order and then everything is linked.
56:44
So if that cabinet install day gets pushed out a week, that
56:47
means you're ordering can be a week later as well.
56:49
And, and that's how the schedule everything should cascade and
56:52
have a critical path. The final thing I'm going to be
56:54
mentioned here about, you know, larger, better quality projects
56:57
is exceeding your client expectations.
56:59
And this kind of stuff you may think like, how does this
57:02
attribute to larger projects, like just being marketing for
57:05
larger projects? Yes, you should, but that
57:08
doesn't mean you're going to land those projects.
57:10
These three steps here that I mentioned, this is how you are
57:13
going to position yourself and have the confidence to know you
57:16
can do large, amazing, more detailed, more expensive type of
57:20
project and the marketplace is gonna get crowded.
57:23
Client satisfaction is what makes you a strong company.
57:26
At the end of the day, it boils down to the client.
57:29
Are they happy? Are they going to tell their
57:31
friends, neighbors, relatives, everyone?
57:33
The best salesperson you are ever going to have for your
57:36
business is every single client that you have.
57:39
Every single client is going to be a sales promoter or a sales D
57:44
motor of your business. So make sure that this client
57:48
expectation is super important. Yes, not everything is going
57:51
great, but always make sure it's right by the client.
57:54
That means if you have to take a, you know, a small loss on a
57:57
little part of the project or you've gotta, you know, call the
58:00
client a couple of times, you gotta deal with them, deal with
58:02
them. Do your best to, you know, put
58:04
out those flames, but really concentrate on your best clients
58:07
because those are the ones that are going to refer you.
58:09
Now, it's not just about you and your business as well.
58:12
It's all your employees, right? So train your employees.
58:14
How do you talk to clients? What kind of questions should
58:16
you answer? How should you introduce
58:18
yourself if you're showing up to their house?
58:20
How do you knock on the door? You park your your truck right
58:23
in the driveway in front of the garage that now they can't get
58:26
out until you park on the street.
58:27
You park with with their truck viewable to their their front
58:31
window right. All these little details that
58:34
add up, but are all attribute that yourself to an amazing
58:38
experience. You can think of going to any no
58:40
big franchise like restaurant or store.
58:42
You go in and everything is in order.
58:45
Everything's the same branding. You can tell there's a process,
58:48
there's a way, there's a certain way they greet you.
58:50
There's a certain questions they have to ask.
58:52
Sometimes they're a little annoying, you know, can help you
58:54
with anything and all this kind of stuff, but that consistency
58:57
is what creates great client experiences.
58:59
Updates, as I mentioned, those weekly updates for sure
59:02
communicating fast. And honestly, when something bad
59:05
happens on site, call your client right away and tell them,
59:08
hey, this bad thing happened. Just tell them the facts.
59:11
You don't have to make a big story.
59:13
You don't have to be like, oh, this is so bad or this, you
59:15
know, I'm so sorry or whatever. Just tell them, hey, this
59:19
happened, this thing got wrecked, we're taking care of
59:22
it. Don't worry, it's not going to
59:23
affect the schedule. I don't know exactly how much
59:25
it's gonna cost you, but well, I should have an update for you
59:28
within the next, you know, 2472 hours, one to two days, whatever
59:31
it may be. That way your client again, that
59:33
trust gets super high because they know even if things get go
59:36
wrong, I know my contractor is going to call me and he's going
59:39
to tell me exactly, you know what happened and they're going
59:43
to deal with it and fix it. And then it's off of their out
59:46
of their mind and you know, they don't have to worry about it,
59:48
right? So the quicker the better.
59:50
Everybody loves speed. They love getting responses.
59:52
They feel appreciated and heard when they get quick responses.
59:56
And the last thing which I mentioned is setting those clear
59:58
expectations. So what to expect, document,
1:00:00
outline, everything they need to expect about your company, the
1:00:04
project, all of that stuff should be very clear for your
1:00:08
clients so they know exactly what to expect through the whole
1:00:10
process. Now, part of getting bigger and
1:00:13
better quality projects isn't just about size.
1:00:16
It's it's also about the right fit and the ability for you to
1:00:21
provide amazing client experience.
1:00:23
So taking on the wrong project, it drains a lot of your time and
1:00:25
money. Sure you've gone through these
1:00:27
projects where it's like, why did I even take this project on,
1:00:30
right. It's just it's been a mess from
1:00:32
day one. It's difficult I'm gonna lose
1:00:34
money on it it's a bunch of headaches I'm dealing with the
1:00:36
clients and I just can't wait for it to be done.
1:00:39
My client Rob, he applied the same filters that we share with
1:00:41
you. They're able to double their
1:00:43
revenue and within one year I believe so you probably heard
1:00:47
this before never leave money on the table.
1:00:49
I don't believe this is a good concept, especially with
1:00:51
clients. Your clients are gonna be a
1:00:53
reflection of yourself. So if you're always like worried
1:00:57
about money, if you're always like in a rush, if you're
1:01:00
unorganized, you're gonna attract clients that are kind of
1:01:03
operate the same way. So you wanna be coming at this
1:01:05
from you're gonna provide amazing value.
1:01:08
The clients are gonna pay what it's worth.
1:01:10
They're gonna hire you because you are in demand builder.
1:01:15
And if the clients or the projects don't live up to those
1:01:18
expectations, you need to be willing to move on and you'll
1:01:22
work for the next one that that will be filtering wrong
1:01:25
projects. This will help you they'll
1:01:27
because again, it's not all about more leads, more clients,
1:01:31
growing the project size. You can go from 1,000,000 to 2
1:01:34
million very easily and still do the same amount of projects by
1:01:37
just doubling the size. The first thing about this
1:01:40
filter is the lead qualification checklist.
1:01:42
Someone calls you, someone fills out the form on your website,
1:01:45
asking them the questions, getting their information.
1:01:48
Ask them about their expectations, what size of
1:01:51
building they're planning on building, what style.
1:01:54
If they, you know, working with the designer interior, there
1:01:57
should be a form that gets filled out.
1:01:58
It should go into your CRM so that everybody has access to it.
1:02:01
And you can quickly filter out the ones that are going to be an
1:02:04
issue or the ones that aren't just quite ready yet.
1:02:07
And maybe you need to go back to the drawing board as far as what
1:02:09
they can afford or, or contact them at a later date, how soon
1:02:14
they want to get started. If they've got other quotes from
1:02:16
other builders, I know it can be uncomfortable.
1:02:18
I guess asking like, hey, are you getting other builders to
1:02:21
bid on this job? And you don't need to make it
1:02:23
super obvious. Essentially, you'd be surprised
1:02:26
how open people would be with you when you don't make a big
1:02:29
deal about it. Just ask them, Hey, anybody else
1:02:32
you know that you've talked to about this job?
1:02:33
Oh, yeah, we, you know, we talked to XYZ builder and
1:02:36
usually clients would be more than happy to tell you,
1:02:38
especially if they're shopping you around because they want you
1:02:41
to know, hey, I'm looking at all these other people, you better
1:02:44
give me amazing price and amazing service and all this
1:02:47
stuff, right? So you don't want to discount
1:02:49
them for it. It's, you know, being prudent
1:02:51
for some people. Typically speaking, they're
1:02:53
happy to tell you that. And then you want to schedule
1:02:54
the the home visit with your estimator, maybe project
1:02:58
manager, whatever it may be, receptionist could schedule
1:03:01
maybe a 15 minute call with yourself so that you can ask
1:03:03
them more specifically questions about the project.
1:03:06
And then usually you can give them like kind of a ballpark
1:03:08
range of the project, if that's feasible.
1:03:11
Then you would go, you know, meet them in person or set up a
1:03:14
Zoom call that's a little bit longer and more specifically
1:03:16
what they're looking for, what you can provide, all those kind
1:03:19
of things. You could also sell them right
1:03:22
away on like a very low ticket first consultation.
1:03:26
I know builders that have used this effectively where
1:03:28
essentially you send a project manager and a designer over to
1:03:32
their home as a intro meeting, charge maybe a hundred $200,
1:03:36
whatever it is just kind of to cover your cost.
1:03:38
It also kind of weeds out that that selection filter of like
1:03:41
who's actually willing to put a couple $100 down to get some
1:03:45
professional advice on the project and who's just kind of
1:03:48
shopping around looking for some free quotes kind of thing.
1:03:51
So essentially you're helping yourself because you are getting
1:03:54
paid or paying at least the time that it takes to send your
1:03:57
people over there. And then they can get
1:04:00
information from the client, understand what they want, what
1:04:03
they're looking for, start some preliminary planning and then
1:04:05
you can provide that that rough budget that I mentioned earlier
1:04:08
as a free service essentially with that.
1:04:10
So that is a good way as well to filter who's actually serious
1:04:14
and who's not. Alright, So the three R's
1:04:16
framework, you only want to take IT projects that score ideally 3
1:04:20
out of 3 and it at very least you want to know how many of
1:04:23
these are you giving up? If if you're not hitting all
1:04:26
three out of three, but you should be hitting all three
1:04:28
three first one ROI. So is it financially worth it?
1:04:31
Is this a project that's going to be worth it for me?
1:04:34
You know, if it if it's a small project or it's something far
1:04:37
away, whatever it may be, but am I gonna make a decent return on
1:04:41
this? Another key thing in that
1:04:43
estimating process that I mentioned is having a small
1:04:46
projects fee or markup. So let's say you're normally
1:04:50
you're marking up your estimates 25%.
1:04:52
If you get a small project, whatever that may be, that could
1:04:55
be any project under 50,000. It could be any project under
1:04:57
250,000 or 500,000 depending on size of projects you're doing
1:05:01
whatever is below that your markup is essentially higher.
1:05:04
So you could have a 30 or 35% markup on small projects, mid
1:05:08
sized projects your your basic 25 and then maybe projects like
1:05:12
large ones, a couple $1,000,000. You can lower your margins
1:05:15
slightly because you know that they're more profitable as a
1:05:18
whole and you want to be more competitive on larger specific
1:05:21
projects that you like and less competitive on the small
1:05:25
projects of the projects that you don't like that may be
1:05:27
farther away. And that if you do them, at
1:05:29
least you know you getting compensated by having that
1:05:31
higher markup. So second one is risk.
1:05:33
So how risky is this? Is it something that's outside
1:05:36
of what you normally do? Is it far away?
1:05:39
Are the clients may be a little bit of a risk as you're not sure
1:05:42
is the project or risk because it's very economy based and
1:05:47
you're using materials that you normally wouldn't like to use,
1:05:49
but you're just trying to save them a couple bucks, right?
1:05:51
So what's the risk involved? And then resources, do you have
1:05:54
the time and bandwidth? If you already maxed out on
1:05:56
projects and they're telling you we have to start this project in
1:05:59
two months, you need to tell them.
1:06:01
If you're already busy with work, sorry, I, I just don't see
1:06:04
this as feasible. I think if you go with the
1:06:06
builder that tells you they can start it in two months, we can
1:06:08
get you in, in, in our pipeline, you know, in six months.
1:06:11
Much better to plan out this project.
1:06:13
This house is gonna last you 1020, thirty years potentially,
1:06:17
depending on what you want. And you should not sacrifice a
1:06:22
good quality build and a good quality project just to save
1:06:24
yourself a couple of months. Those are the 3R's you need to
1:06:27
ask yourself about every project.
1:06:28
And they should have a bit of a system behind us.
1:06:30
So like I mentioned those three hours and then give it a bit of
1:06:33
a scoring. So budget fit, how well is the
1:06:36
budget aligned with the clients budget scope clarity or the
1:06:39
clients quite clear on what they want timeline realism getting
1:06:43
back to before like, you know, do they wanna start this like as
1:06:45
soon as possible and it's just not not feasible.
1:06:48
And then red flags. So how many red flags are there
1:06:51
clients indecisive is is it, you know, difficult project or
1:06:54
whatever, all this stuff, right? So have a bit of a mental
1:06:56
scoring, even jot it down and just write it out.
1:06:59
Take that extra 5 minutes. These little things add up to
1:07:03
big differences in your company. Put it into your processes if
1:07:06
you have other people taking care of this stuff and you know
1:07:08
like salespeople are estimators, project managers do some pre
1:07:11
planning and use mental filters of like is this an actual
1:07:14
project? What's the score?
1:07:16
Not just like how it feels, but actually on the paper.
1:07:18
Does this make sense now? Refusing wrong projects?
1:07:21
I know this can feel uncomfortable.
1:07:23
Again, I remember doing this with a client and we were just
1:07:27
way too busy there. Their project was on the other
1:07:30
side of the city. It was difficult to get to.
1:07:31
It was a very like complicated. I ended up having to let them
1:07:36
know like, hey, I apologize, but we can't take on your project at
1:07:40
this point. We've we've just got too much
1:07:41
and I've gotta be able to, you know, make sure our, my existing
1:07:44
clients are getting good experience and what have you.
1:07:47
And they end up complaining pretty badly about it.
1:07:49
And I didn't feel great. It kind of sucked.
1:07:52
And there's probably something I maybe could have done to let
1:07:55
them off a little easier. But essentially no one likes to
1:07:59
hear that. And you need to find a way to do
1:08:02
this respectively. You have to let people know that
1:08:04
you know your project just is not in line with the type of
1:08:07
projects taking on or we just don't have, you know, room in
1:08:10
our schedule at this point. Whatever you need to do, but let
1:08:12
them down gently and softly and make sure you're always like
1:08:15
trying to save face because you never know what they could come
1:08:17
back in a year and have like a larger project or or still need
1:08:21
something done or or whatever you so don't burn the bridge,
1:08:25
but learn how to let those things go.
1:08:28
Now you know the big three levers in order to prepare your
1:08:32
business to scale. Even after getting the levers
1:08:36
right, there's still a few things that you need to know in
1:08:38
order to not cap your growth or slow you down.
1:08:41
So even if you get thousands of lives without fixing the
1:08:43
bottlenecks in your company, you'll still be wasting a lot of
1:08:46
time, money, and energy. Scaling doesn't fix bottlenecks
1:08:49
automatically, so that's that's another thing.
1:08:50
Often you as a business owner are one of the bottlenecks and
1:08:54
growing a larger business just means there's more stuff flowing
1:08:57
through you. Unless you're getting the right
1:08:59
systems and processes in place, and the bottlenecks will get
1:09:03
magnified. Essentially, there's going to be
1:09:05
certain pinch points and bottlenecks inside your business
1:09:07
that are just going to get even more profound and hold you more
1:09:12
and more back as you scale. The bigger you get, the stronger
1:09:14
the bottlenecks become. So my client Melissa doubled
1:09:17
their profit margins and only two months.
1:09:19
That's actually one of two clients recently, both did this
1:09:21
for him. We we've gotten really good at
1:09:23
this and being able to double margins because often I pinpoint
1:09:25
those few mistakes that I mentioned, you know, in the
1:09:27
estimating or the project size or, or a number of different
1:09:30
things with expenses and all this stuff and these essentially
1:09:33
that's slowing you down, right? Like there's just these small
1:09:35
fixes, seemingly small but huge impact that can double your
1:09:39
margins and just position you within a very short period of
1:09:42
time, 2-3 months in order to to start scaling your business.
1:09:45
So the first one is inconsistent hiring and turnover.
1:09:48
If you're struggling with people, can't find people that
1:09:51
want to work, people that don't stick around, they don't show up
1:09:54
on time, they don't know what they're doing.
1:09:56
All of this stuff. Take a good look in the mirror.
1:09:58
You do not have a business that is setting employees up for
1:10:02
success or have a good system to bring in the right employees for
1:10:06
the specific roles. It's probably a combination of
1:10:08
both of those. For hiring, you always want to
1:10:11
be starting with ideal employee profile.
1:10:13
We often think who's our ideal client, but you should have an
1:10:16
ideal employee profile for every role.
1:10:18
So Carpenter, project manager, estimator, office admin, chief
1:10:23
financial officer, whatever it is, there's going to be a
1:10:25
specific type of person that is well suited to that role.
1:10:28
They're going to have a certain type of experience, certain
1:10:30
characteristics and should be documented.
1:10:32
What type of ideal person will fit this rule specifically?
1:10:36
The best and the great way to start this is who's been good?
1:10:39
So if you have like a site manager, foreman, crew chief,
1:10:42
whatever you want to call it, think about like who's the best
1:10:45
person you ever hire for that position or the best two people
1:10:47
you ever hire for that position? What were they like?
1:10:49
What kind of characteristics do they have?
1:10:51
What was their, you know, demographics, what was their
1:10:53
psychographics? All this kind of stuff, because
1:10:56
now you have a clear picture of that person.
1:10:57
Now you create a job ad for to attract that type of person.
1:11:01
From there, there's going to be a five step hiring process.
1:11:04
Most of the best people for a specific position that you want
1:11:08
to hire in your business or already working in other
1:11:11
businesses, they're not in the job market looking for jobs
1:11:14
because they're good. They're already hired and
1:11:16
they're working inside another company.
1:11:18
How are you reach those people? It's extremely hard because they
1:11:21
may not actively be looking for a job, but they may be thinking
1:11:23
about it. So what you need to be able to
1:11:25
do is that CRM that I mentioned, like Rapidly CRM.
1:11:28
You have everybody that's applied for those different
1:11:30
positions in your CRM database so that when there's a new
1:11:34
carpentry job coming up, anybody who's applied for a carpentry
1:11:37
job in the past five years, you can send an e-mail out to them.
1:11:40
Hey, by the way, we are now hiring it for another Carpenter
1:11:43
position. If you'd like to reapply, please
1:11:46
send us your resume or fill out this form or whatever it may be.
1:11:50
Because that person three years ago, that wasn't a good fit,
1:11:53
that only had two years of experience.
1:11:55
He could have five years of experience now and be a much
1:11:58
better candidate for the position.
1:12:00
But he's working in other company, He's not looking for a
1:12:02
job, so you don't have access to him.
1:12:04
So this is a way to really have a great hiring and make sure
1:12:07
that you're pulling in the best people.
1:12:08
The third step there is a quick phone call.
1:12:11
You've sorted through the resumes you you pick out your
1:12:14
top three to five candidates out of you know, however many
1:12:17
applied and you're gonna call them.
1:12:18
How's it going go through a few deal Breakers.
1:12:20
Do you have a vehicle? Can you legally work You go
1:12:23
through the resume just slightly.
1:12:24
Just make sure they're telling the truth as much as possible.
1:12:26
And then you you get a read on them.
1:12:28
Do they answer the phone? Do they call you back if you
1:12:30
left a voicemail? Can they conversate?
1:12:31
Well, if they sound like someone who could be a good fit, then
1:12:35
you schedule the 60 minute in person interview could be at the
1:12:38
job site, could be at a coffee shop.
1:12:40
I used to go to a coffee shop and I would just invite and have
1:12:44
essentially one hour back-to-back to back to me.
1:12:46
Sound like a lot of time. Usually I wouldn't have 5, it
1:12:48
might have like 2 to 3. And you can really spend the
1:12:52
time with them. And if during the interview you
1:12:56
can tell like this person just is not going to work, you don't
1:12:59
need to spend the full hour. You know, don't jump to
1:13:01
conclusions, but ask them a few questions.
1:13:03
Thank them kindly for applying. And you should have a list of
1:13:07
questions, typically around 10 questions, 11:50 questions.
1:13:10
And you should be scoring them. The reason you score them on the
1:13:13
questions is because it's hard to remember later.
1:13:16
Like you get a feeling for people, but it's hard to
1:13:18
remember later, specifically how well they answered questions and
1:13:22
where they excel and don't excel.
1:13:23
So you can have a much better, you know, review of that later
1:13:26
to pick the right candidate. The last step in the five step
1:13:29
hiring method is you have to do do diligence.
1:13:32
Really make sure that you're calling their past employers,
1:13:36
you know, personal references they may have you're looking
1:13:39
into a background check is is ideal.
1:13:42
Look at their social media profiles.
1:13:44
Typically a lot of stuff is open nowadays and you can go check
1:13:47
out their Facebook, their Instagram talk, whatever may be
1:13:50
and just take a look. It'll give you a good idea of
1:13:53
what they do outside of their, you know, working life and it'll
1:13:57
get you a little read. You don't want to put all of the
1:13:58
emphasis on, you know, how they have their, you know, Facebook
1:14:02
setup or whatever people live their life.
1:14:04
It doesn't necessarily mean they're this type of person or
1:14:06
that, but it'll give you better insight and give you a full
1:14:09
fuller picture of who this person is and maybe how to
1:14:13
differentiate between, you know, two to three candidates.
1:14:15
So that five step hiring process usually gives you really great
1:14:19
people. And then after that, more on the
1:14:21
turnover side is make sure you appreciate them and show it.
1:14:25
Good employees are more concerned about having a good
1:14:28
place to work where they, you know, fit in, where they're
1:14:31
appreciated, where they feel that they are being heard more
1:14:35
than money. If you have the type of
1:14:36
employees that if they get another dollar to an hour,
1:14:39
they're bouncing over to the next, you know, contractor down
1:14:42
the street, then you're not doing your job properly either
1:14:44
by hiring or by creating a good culture within your organization
1:14:48
and you should be compensating you guys.
1:14:50
While don't think that that you should be always trying to keep
1:14:53
their wages low or anything like that.
1:14:54
If the only reason your employees are there is solely
1:14:57
for paycheck, obviously at the end of the day, they need to
1:14:59
make money and support themselves.
1:15:00
But if that is the only reason they come to work, then the
1:15:03
culture and the, the experience that they're going to have and
1:15:06
the dedication to you as an employer is, is not going to be
1:15:10
that great Accountability and leadership.
1:15:11
And I mentioned this earlier, you are the head honcho, the
1:15:15
biggest leader in your business, and your business is going to
1:15:18
rise and fall with your leadership ability.
1:15:21
This happens all the time, happened to me, where business
1:15:25
grows, you get a lot more people, a lot more money, a lot
1:15:27
of stuff is happening and you effectively don't have the
1:15:32
leadership ability to be able to bring the right people in, to
1:15:36
lead your people, to manage your finances, the team, all of this
1:15:40
different stuff. So leadership really becomes
1:15:43
important, especially as you start scaling to be able to
1:15:46
create leaders, work on building people inside your organization.
1:15:50
So give your people authority, let them know these are the
1:15:54
decisions that need to get made and how to make those decisions.
1:15:57
We've got SOP document for decision making.
1:15:59
Essentially, what happens in this situation?
1:16:02
What happens in that situation? What happens if this happens,
1:16:04
you know, client gets upset or client asks, can you do side
1:16:07
work for me or, or whatever, right.
1:16:09
So these types of decisions you should not be making as the
1:16:12
business owner. I mean, you make them, but you
1:16:14
put them on paper so that your people know they've got a
1:16:16
playbook of like what is an acceptable decision, how to make
1:16:19
decisions? Is it a type A or type B
1:16:22
decision? You know, type one or two,
1:16:24
there's a different names for it.
1:16:25
But essentially, can this get undone?
1:16:27
And can we fix this, you know, quite rapidly?
1:16:29
Something like pouring concrete. That's, that's a type 2 decision
1:16:33
because it's pretty hard to change concrete once it's
1:16:35
poured. So if they have to make a
1:16:37
decision about concrete, they have to be, you know, make sure
1:16:39
you clear on the specs, everything is checked and, and
1:16:42
square. And if something is out of
1:16:43
place, make sure we know that it's correct before we pour,
1:16:47
right? So things like this, making it
1:16:49
safer for employees to share concerns and admit mistakes, No
1:16:52
person has ever not made a mistake.
1:16:55
And nobody who's done great things and is a leader has not
1:16:58
made a lot of mistakes. I find the best leaders, I've
1:17:01
made the most mistakes. I've made tons.
1:17:03
I make them every day and I'll continue to make them in the
1:17:06
future. But I know that those are
1:17:07
learning experiences. I know it's part of the game.
1:17:10
I don't like making mistakes, but it happens, right?
1:17:12
And you have to realize that with your people as well.
1:17:14
There's a point of no return where if someone is negligent
1:17:17
and making mistakes, left, right and centre just isn't getting
1:17:19
it, Yeah, they've gotta find somewhere else.
1:17:21
But if they really care about their job, they're competent,
1:17:24
they make mistakes, realize it's just part of the game and you
1:17:28
need to put a better system or training or something to make
1:17:31
sure that mistake doesn't happen in the future.
1:17:33
But having your, your employees know that they can come to you
1:17:37
and tell you when mistakes have been made or when they've got a
1:17:40
concern about how things are getting managed or the client or
1:17:42
the project, that's the kind of openness that you need to have.
1:17:45
You really need to get away from micromanaging.
1:17:48
Create a system for people to follow, Createspace for them to
1:17:51
follow and then lead them so that they always know what they
1:17:55
should be doing. They always know they can come
1:17:56
to you if they need help and need some support.
1:18:00
Now one of the biggest mental mindset blocks that a lot of
1:18:05
contractors get into when they start scaling is they don't
1:18:08
realize that your role and the activities and tasks that you
1:18:11
are doing need to change. They start focusing on too many
1:18:16
different things and the wrong things.
1:18:18
You need to be always hyper focused on 10X type tasks, 10X
1:18:23
things that are gonna move your business and starts, you know,
1:18:26
being able to scale building systems, systems that work while
1:18:32
you sleep. Once you get these systems in
1:18:34
place, your your life just becomes so much more free.
1:18:37
You have things dialed in. You're not getting as many no
1:18:41
calls and constant firefighting. So efficient systems are the
1:18:44
building blocks of growth. You can't scale without systems.
1:18:47
You must have an overall plan and structure for your systems.
1:18:50
Without strong system, you'll work harder and lose years of
1:18:54
progress scaling the wrong way. I've seen this time and time
1:18:57
again guys try to scale up. They get a bunch of jobs.
1:19:00
They go from, you know, a million, 2 million to 4 million.
1:19:02
The business becomes unmanageable.
1:19:04
Finances are a mess, teams of mess.
1:19:06
Everything kind of falls apart. It's like a House of Cards if
1:19:09
you don't have a good solid foundation of system.
1:19:11
So systems will help you overcome your low production.
1:19:14
It'll even out and bring consistency to your production,
1:19:17
to your leads to everything that happens within inside your
1:19:20
business. Now I know you may be thinking
1:19:22
like what our business systems isn't this a whole bunch of
1:19:24
complicated techie kind of stuff.
1:19:26
How do I actually build this? It's actually quite simple and
1:19:29
you just need to pay attention to this chapter before we get
1:19:33
into the specific what this systems look like in the
1:19:35
different areas of your business.
1:19:37
There's really 3 components to a well thought out and a well
1:19:42
implementable system. Because building the system is
1:19:45
one piece of it and can happen fairly quickly.
1:19:48
Implementing it and getting your team to use it and working out
1:19:51
all the little kinks and bugs in it, that is another piece of the
1:19:55
puzzle and can take sometimes a bit longer, but with the right
1:19:58
feedback loop you can have ever increasing and improving system.
1:20:01
So the three components. Either a good system is the
1:20:04
first the the SOP document. So this is just a document that
1:20:08
outlines what are the steps, what are the things that need to
1:20:11
get done. And you don't need to have every
1:20:13
little detail with pictures and diagrams and this big drawn out
1:20:17
huge document. You really want to just start
1:20:19
with the big steps for an SOP. So if this is creating an
1:20:24
estimate, what are the big things of estimate?
1:20:27
You gather all the materials, any notes, the plans, you will
1:20:31
load up the takeoff software, you do your takeoffs like
1:20:34
whatever it is, right? Just the big steps.
1:20:36
You don't need to have all the little nitty gritty stuff.
1:20:38
The other component is the workflow and I would actually
1:20:41
start with this. The workflow is the big steps in
1:20:45
a diagram and I like to use Lucid chart.
1:20:49
There's a whole bunch of, you know, different chart diagrams
1:20:51
out there. Essentially you're just creating
1:20:53
little boxes, little squares with arrows of like this is one
1:20:56
thing, this is the next thing. Sometimes there's like a
1:20:58
decision that needs to be made. The workflow gives a good visual
1:21:01
representation of what this system looks like.
1:21:04
The SOP document gets a little more granular and lets someone
1:21:08
read it. And then the final piece to this
1:21:11
three piece system is the training video.
1:21:14
So having some sort of video pull up Zoom or your favorite
1:21:18
screen recording software and just record yourself doing
1:21:21
whatever needs to be done. If it's an admin task,
1:21:23
estimating anything software based, just record yourself,
1:21:27
talk through what you're doing. And with these three components,
1:21:31
you can more or less hand that off anybody.
1:21:34
And yeah, they'll still need a little bit of guidance and
1:21:36
training, but probably 80% of the training they need to do is
1:21:40
contained within those documents.
1:21:42
And then there's just going to be the certain little gaps of
1:21:44
knowledge that you need to help them with.
1:21:46
So that is how you put together a really robust system in your
1:21:51
business. The the issue comes into where
1:21:54
to focus and what do the system actually look like, Right.
1:21:56
So my client, James, he tripled revenue after implementing
1:22:00
proper systems in this construction company.
1:22:02
And I'm going to be providing you some of the specific systems
1:22:05
that we helped him with. So building systems for your
1:22:07
core operations, the marketing is such an important part of
1:22:11
your business. And if you have inconsistent
1:22:13
marketing, your production, the rest of your business, your
1:22:16
finances, everything else is going to be inconsistent.
1:22:19
So that's why it makes sense to start the beginning.
1:22:21
The marketing leads into the estimating.
1:22:23
And estimating, as I mentioned earlier is where you make your
1:22:26
money. So marketing system, what it
1:22:28
should look like is all those different multi channel
1:22:31
marketing that I mentioned earlier, social media, e-mail,
1:22:34
website, all this stuff. And then you need an actual
1:22:37
document stating how does someone create post that goes
1:22:42
out to your social media? How does someone write A blog
1:22:44
article? How does somebody send out the
1:22:47
e-mail campaign? And now with like Chachi PT
1:22:50
Gemini, you know, AI and stuff like that.
1:22:52
It is so easy to be able to create these systems now and
1:22:56
have someone who's not overly experienced, who doesn't have a
1:22:59
lot of knowledge, but who has a discerning eye for what is good
1:23:03
or like aligned with your messaging and everything.
1:23:06
It's very easy for them to create these marketing materials
1:23:09
for you. Essentially, if you've done your
1:23:11
homework, as I mentioned earlier with the niche and you've got
1:23:14
your unique selling proposition and you've got your brand guide.
1:23:17
Once you have those documents, you can upload those to like a
1:23:21
ChatGPT and then ask it, create me an e-mail newsletter for the
1:23:27
month of December and make sure you mentioned the holidays and
1:23:32
that people can book a free call to start planning their project
1:23:35
in the new year. So you just give it a little bit
1:23:36
of guidelines because it's got your niche, your ideal client,
1:23:40
your unique selling proposition. You can have a link to your
1:23:42
website in the prompt of the AI. Anybody anywhere with any amount
1:23:47
of experience can now create a very beautiful newsletter.
1:23:51
Essentially, you lay out those steps and what needs to be
1:23:54
included and now you've systemized your marketing.
1:23:57
Another reason to systemize marketing is you as a business
1:23:59
owner, you've got other stuff to worry about than generating
1:24:03
leads. Like that's a big important
1:24:05
part. What I see time and time again
1:24:06
is a contractor will do some lead Gen. or marketing or season
1:24:10
gets busy, things are good, and then all of a sudden they got a
1:24:13
lot of projects. So they're busy with the
1:24:14
projects, managing projects, managing their team, managing
1:24:17
the projects, and they forget about their marketing and their
1:24:20
marketing dips down. And then those projects start to
1:24:22
dip down and now there's no new leads in the pipeline.
1:24:25
That's where that inconsistency comes in.
1:24:27
So systemizing your marketing super important.
1:24:30
The SOP document and videos and all that stuff, chunk it down
1:24:34
piece by piece. What's the most impactful I
1:24:35
could do right now? Well, I want to be able to hand
1:24:38
off e-mail marketing to my team. Good.
1:24:40
Train them on it, Get that off your plate, figure out who you
1:24:43
can hand this off to and and create that that system for
1:24:46
them. Next one is estimating, and
1:24:47
we've gone into some detail about this.
1:24:49
As far as the SOP is concerned, what does people need to do once
1:24:53
they start an estimate? If it's a project manager, they
1:24:55
probably need to talk with the designer.
1:24:57
Potentially they should talk with you if you're the one
1:24:59
that's still meeting with the client.
1:25:00
So they gather all the information they can, they load
1:25:03
up the documents, they start probably doing a take off, put
1:25:06
it in all their numbers. Next step would be to start
1:25:09
building out the pricing. What is the proposal look like?
1:25:12
How do they export the pro proposal?
1:25:14
How does the review process work with yourself or somebody else
1:25:17
on the team? So just outline all of that.
1:25:19
And kind of pro tip here is if you don't like writing a whole
1:25:24
lot, again, use some AI, use chat to reach out to us.
1:25:28
This is what we do. We've got templates for all of
1:25:29
this stuff and it's, it's essentially plug and play.
1:25:32
We figure out your process because every business does
1:25:34
things a little differently. But either way, it's very easy
1:25:38
to get this stuff in place and then you refine it from there.
1:25:41
Job costing is another one. This will tell you exactly where
1:25:44
you are in every project and make sure you're not going off
1:25:46
the rails and in a bad spot with cash flow and things like that.
1:25:49
What is your on-site guys need to do with receipts?
1:25:51
If they purchase materials? How does information come in
1:25:54
from your suppliers? How does that get into your
1:25:57
project management software, your accounting software?
1:26:00
How does they categorize if there's a mistake with the job
1:26:03
costing? Let's say you've got a project
1:26:05
manager who's new or you've handed this off to an admin
1:26:08
person and they're like XT as you know, fasteners, whatever.
1:26:14
I don't know what this is for. Is this framing finishing?
1:26:17
Have a spreadsheet where they can input all the materials that
1:26:21
they're unsure of of which cost code to code it to.
1:26:25
And now you've got this database that anybody in the future can
1:26:28
go and search and now you don't have to tell them or your
1:26:31
project managers don't have to tell them like which Costco this
1:26:34
for. I like project managers to be
1:26:35
doing the job costing categorization because they
1:26:38
usually know what's going on on site.
1:26:39
They know the schedule, they know if typically you want them,
1:26:41
but they're still gonna be gaps or things are unsure of.
1:26:44
Have a document where you can capture those things so that
1:26:46
anybody in your organization can go back and search for it.
1:26:50
So you don't have the same people doing the same
1:26:52
inefficiencies, making the same mistakes or having the same
1:26:55
questions, right? Document any kind of little
1:26:58
issues or things that people are sure of in your business.
1:27:00
And that in and of itself is like a system.
1:27:02
What I like to implement with clients is we have a knowledge
1:27:05
base, which is a spreadsheet with a whole bunch of resources
1:27:08
links. And it's, it's a bit of a
1:27:10
dashboard so that if anybody in the organization finds something
1:27:14
useful, let's say one of your framers watches this video on
1:27:18
how to frame a wall. He's like, wow, that was really
1:27:20
helpful. He can take that video and put
1:27:22
it in the knowledge base so that every future framer can go to
1:27:25
the knowledge base and like, hey, framing a wall, Cool.
1:27:27
Like you've got like this specific resource of training
1:27:32
and documentation and articles and whatever that your company
1:27:37
can rely on to help build their knowledge and training.
1:27:40
When you start building people and you give them the space to
1:27:43
kind of self educate and train themselves, that's when you
1:27:46
create a beautiful team and your team can really like take
1:27:50
control and start to improve the business without you.
1:27:54
When you can step back from the business and your team and the
1:27:57
systems continue to improve themselves, you've, you've
1:28:00
reached the jackpot, the gold mined filling out systems in
1:28:03
your business and it, it is a beautiful thing.
1:28:04
Change order workflow is another one where it has to be very
1:28:08
clear. If you're unsure of whether this
1:28:09
is a change order or you think it's a change order, who do you
1:28:12
contact? How do you make that decision?
1:28:14
Again, having some sort of an SOP document for decision making
1:28:17
for your different types of people.
1:28:19
So project manager, they're going to be making a list of
1:28:21
different types of decisions, then your site managers or your
1:28:25
carpenters or your admin people. So outline exactly which
1:28:28
decisions they should be making and how to be thinking about
1:28:31
those decisions. Sometimes you'll have to tell
1:28:32
them specifically, like when you have this dilemma, this is the
1:28:36
decision you should be making. Other times you just provide
1:28:38
more of a Gray area of like this is our, you know, principles
1:28:43
and, and how we would approach this and then they will have to
1:28:46
make the best decision on the spot.
1:28:48
The last one we talked about the core operations is your
1:28:51
financial system. So once the marketing estimating
1:28:53
your financials are in place, you've got the job costing and,
1:28:57
and your project management. That is a beautiful core
1:29:00
already. And 70% of your business is more
1:29:02
or less tuned in as far as systems.
1:29:04
Now, financial management systems, this is going to be
1:29:09
typically a few different parties here because you're
1:29:11
going to have your, you know, bookkeeper, you've got your
1:29:14
account and you've got you yourself.
1:29:15
If you've got someone else in the office just running, you
1:29:18
know, invoicing and and things like that, then there's quite a
1:29:22
few different people and a lot of numbers floating around,
1:29:24
which is why this can get a little bit confusing.
1:29:27
But prioritizing these systems as well because sometimes people
1:29:30
will be overwhelmed and they've got a lot to do.
1:29:32
So make sure that your admin person knows like getting
1:29:34
invoices out to clients highest priority because we need to get
1:29:37
paid. We need to that to be
1:29:39
consistent. We need the, the clients to
1:29:41
know, you know, essentially what needs to get paid for, for
1:29:44
projects. This should be done through
1:29:46
either project management software or bookkeeping
1:29:49
software. And this is also a bit of a pain
1:29:52
point for a lot of contractors because typically it's, it's
1:29:55
your admin person. You wanna hand that off that
1:29:57
invoicing piece so it's not relying on you, but your admin
1:30:00
person sometimes doesn't know essentially what's happening on
1:30:03
site. Where's the progress at, what's
1:30:05
actually been, you know, needs to get billed.
1:30:07
If you're doing job costing correctly, then it's very easy
1:30:10
for your admin person to see exactly what has all been
1:30:14
expensed and and they can calculate from there.
1:30:16
If you send invoices out on let's say Tuesday, they should
1:30:20
be meeting with the project manager on Monday and just
1:30:22
getting a quick update. Where are we at with this
1:30:24
project? OHP these these line items are
1:30:26
all completed or we're at, you know, 70% done this phase.
1:30:31
However, you're going to invoice to the client layout the steps
1:30:34
be very specific with links with which software to use with how
1:30:37
to think about it, all that stuff and start with a big
1:30:40
picture and then nail it down. Now you may be thinking, I don't
1:30:45
want to take the time or how am I ever going to get all this in
1:30:48
place, building out the all these systems and fine tuning
1:30:51
them. It is A1 to potentially more
1:30:53
year process with somebody like us where we've done this before
1:30:56
and we can just guide you through it a one year.
1:30:58
Typically you can build all this out without too much difficulty.
1:31:02
What you also want to do is rely on your team.
1:31:04
So your admin person, if they've been running this system and
1:31:08
invoicing clients for a year or two years or forever, let them
1:31:13
write the SOP, have them fill in the systems, you review it, you
1:31:16
give your feedback of like, this is how we're doing it, but I
1:31:19
think we should probably do it this week.
1:31:21
It'll be more efficient or more accurate or whatever, right?
1:31:23
So the first step is like figure out the system, whoever's
1:31:27
running it, have them document what they're doing.
1:31:30
So they build the first draft of the SOP and then you discuss it
1:31:34
and then you can build it from there.
1:31:35
So don't think you need to do everything.
1:31:37
You need to become a master at delegating the tasks in your
1:31:42
business off to your team and leading your team to free up
1:31:46
your time, build the business and bring in new clients and new
1:31:50
money. Now next step or one of the
1:31:53
easiest ways to start freeing up your time is automating your
1:31:56
repetitive tasks. So which task are you doing that
1:31:59
are, you know 20-30 dollar tasks that are repetitive you don't
1:32:03
really enjoy doing and would be pretty easy to create a quick
1:32:07
little document and hand off to someone else.
1:32:09
These you need to get off your plate.
1:32:10
The client onboarding and follow up is something that can
1:32:13
definitely be handled by admin staff or your project manager
1:32:17
and there's a lot of setup. So once the client has signed on
1:32:20
the dotted line, now you need to send them, you know, welcome
1:32:24
e-mail. Maybe you send them the what to
1:32:25
expect document. As I mentioned, you're gonna
1:32:27
have to take their estimate in the project management software,
1:32:31
create a project around it. You may want to review the
1:32:34
ordering or the schedule or what have you.
1:32:36
So whatever those steps are, this should be an automated
1:32:38
thing so that once the client signs, you're more or less can
1:32:42
hand it off to your team. Admin person schedules tasks.
1:32:45
So there's going to be the client onboarding checklist and
1:32:50
what are the tasks that need to get done?
1:32:51
So the admin person, we're gonna have to do, you know, any of the
1:32:54
paperwork, the admin stuff. So they're gonna have a bunch of
1:32:57
tasks and then the admin person assigns tasks to the rest of the
1:33:00
team members. So if they need to assign it to
1:33:03
the account and their financial person to send the, you know,
1:33:06
deposit invoice or or whatever may be, they're going to sign a
1:33:10
task to them. They're then going to assign a
1:33:11
task to the project manager, reach out to the client, send
1:33:14
them the welcome e-mail every like stage.
1:33:16
Your business should have that checklist and your admin person
1:33:19
will be assigning it over to everybody.
1:33:21
Project tracking and notifications.
1:33:23
There's a lot of automations that could be set up around this
1:33:25
too, where there's automated emails that go out.
1:33:28
Once you've have a schedule and you have the contract signed,
1:33:31
when you award that bid, there should be an automated e-mail
1:33:34
that goes out to your say, electrician, lets them know,
1:33:37
hey, we, you know, you won the bid, you awarded it.
1:33:40
We're scheduling you for such and such date.
1:33:43
You have any, you know, issues with that date, please let us
1:33:45
know. Make sure you put it in your
1:33:47
calendar or, or whatever. And then everybody who didn't
1:33:50
get the bid should then get automated e-mail.
1:33:52
Thanks for bidding. We're not moving forward with
1:33:55
you for this project for any number of different reasons.
1:33:57
All of this kind of automated stuff, as well as when the
1:34:00
schedule changes. Now there is a a bit of a
1:34:03
science or balance to notifications because if you
1:34:06
give too many automated notifications, people just wipe
1:34:09
them off their screen and forget about them.
1:34:11
So you need to find that balance with your subcontractors or your
1:34:14
internal team where they're getting notifications that are
1:34:17
pertinent and helpful, but they're not getting like
1:34:20
bombarded with notifications, you know, one week follow up, 2
1:34:24
day follow up, one day follow up, one hour follow up, all this
1:34:27
kind of stuff. Make sure that you have a good
1:34:29
cancer. And then with subcontractors as
1:34:32
well, you need to call them for sure.
1:34:34
Like even if there's automated notifications, hey, you're
1:34:36
starting this project in one week, You have to call them on
1:34:40
the phone to make sure that they're actually getting the
1:34:42
notification and that it works for them, right?
1:34:44
They're, they're not going to go out of their way if they get an
1:34:47
automated notification necessarily to, to reach out to
1:34:49
you. Time tracking can be very
1:34:51
automated as well. The basic kind of automation is
1:34:54
to have your guys do their own time tracking.
1:34:57
You can also use the geofencing. Someone shows up to site as soon
1:35:00
as they're in that vicinity of the the site, it'll
1:35:02
automatically clock them in. When they leave the site, it
1:35:05
clocks them out and it really creates this very seamless
1:35:09
ability to track time lead Gen. automation.
1:35:12
This is so helpful and one of the best things you can set up
1:35:16
early on. Essentially when someone fills
1:35:18
out a form on your website, when they're added to your CRM as a
1:35:21
prospect potential client, they should go onto your e-mail list.
1:35:24
They should start getting like a drip e-mail every probably the
1:35:28
first like one to three days potentially or every other day
1:35:32
for the first week and then maybe every week after that for
1:35:36
two months. And then even longer term,
1:35:39
they'll be starting to get the newsletter after that.
1:35:41
So systemized lead Gen. any information that comes in can
1:35:45
easily send out emails and all this as well as pipeline stages.
1:35:49
So like any good CRM, like the rapidly one that we have, you
1:35:53
can have multiple pipelines, you're going to have one of your
1:35:55
main pipelines can be your those pipeline and you're gonna have,
1:35:57
you know, new lead, contacted, filled out, form qualified,
1:36:02
whatever. Maybe you're gonna have certain
1:36:04
stages or cards and people are gonna move along your pipeline
1:36:08
depending where they are. There's all these automations
1:36:11
that you can do. So let's say someone new lead
1:36:13
comes in, automation goes to your admin person, call this
1:36:16
person right away or you know, send them the welcome e-mail,
1:36:20
whatever it may be. That can be automated as well as
1:36:23
let's say you've moved someone into rough budgeting.
1:36:26
Automation could go to your project manager.
1:36:28
Here's the information. Please start putting together an
1:36:31
estimate, reach out to so and so, whatever it may be, all of
1:36:34
the stuff happening in the background, everything starts to
1:36:36
become fluid and everyone knows what's happening.
1:36:39
You know, they're gonna get automated this or automated
1:36:41
that. And it saves so much time, so
1:36:43
much manual things. And even if the time saved is
1:36:45
only a couple of seconds or a minute or two, it's all those
1:36:48
little mosquitoes or little Nats that keep buzzing around and
1:36:51
just eat up your time and drive you crazy, right?
1:36:54
Because you've probably had this happen where you sit down on
1:36:56
your computer, you respond to a couple emails, you check it, a
1:36:59
couple notifications, and like a couple hours goes by and it's
1:37:01
like, what did I even do? I've been getting a lot done,
1:37:04
but it's all just been little minor, you know, annoyances that
1:37:08
don't really move the ball forward.
1:37:10
And this is where you can run into that trap of not having
1:37:13
good systems in place and just wasting a lot of time doing 10
1:37:17
dollar, $20 automated tasks that shouldn't even be done by
1:37:20
anybody. I'm moving on to #3 here, team
1:37:23
management and productivity systems.
1:37:26
The people of your business are so essentially important and you
1:37:30
build their systems to help your people, to support them, to
1:37:34
facilitate the people. And I wanna make sure we know
1:37:37
that distinction. We're not building systems to
1:37:39
replace people. We're we're helping and
1:37:42
supporting the people by building better systems.
1:37:44
And you may think my site guys aren't going to like this.
1:37:47
It's technology. They're not going to like SOP's
1:37:49
and systems. You'll be very surprised that
1:37:53
when structure and formality starts to come into the
1:37:56
workplace, it doesn't mean it has to be a dry place that no
1:37:58
one has fun anymore. It just means there's a way that
1:38:01
we do things. We do things because they're
1:38:03
efficient. And you as the leader of your
1:38:05
company are going to have to explain why you need them to do
1:38:08
things the certain way. If your guys are on site, like
1:38:10
why do I need this app and why do I need to start tracking
1:38:13
stuff in this app? I don't like it, right?
1:38:14
You need to explain it. This is gonna help you by making
1:38:17
paychecks more efficient. It's gonna help us grow as a
1:38:19
business. It helps.
1:38:21
Whatever, right? So make sure that you're
1:38:23
explaining that the biggest place to work on HR early on is
1:38:28
just figuring out the roles in your company and you're going to
1:38:30
essentially create an organization chart.
1:38:33
So you CEO, president, head honcho, you're at the top.
1:38:36
You're gonna have your vice presidents, CFO's, kind of your
1:38:39
C-Suite operations. Under that you're gonna have
1:38:42
your, your middle managers, project managers, sales,
1:38:45
marketing managers, things like that, bookkeepers, admin.
1:38:48
And then on the lower levels is gonna be your site guys and
1:38:53
basic admin, virtual assistants. Now, the reason you want this
1:38:57
organization chart is because it tells you essentially who's
1:39:00
taking up those responsibilities, who's fitting
1:39:02
those roles. And at the beginning, you as the
1:39:04
business owner, you may be in half of those boxes.
1:39:07
You could be the chief financial officer, the marketing officer,
1:39:11
the sales officer, the production officer, the general
1:39:14
manager, right? You you could fill half of your
1:39:16
organization chart with yourself.
1:39:19
And your goal is to get out of those roles and get these
1:39:22
systems in place and then have the right people in there.
1:39:24
So you need to find rules. Start with the ones that make
1:39:27
the most sense and the roles that are already filled by other
1:39:30
people in your business. And this is going to be a
1:39:32
definition of the role. What are the responsibilities of
1:39:35
it? Who's accountable for what The
1:39:37
project manager is accountable for running a profitable on
1:39:41
budget, on schedule project. Your crew on site is responsible
1:39:45
for the quality. There's a difference between
1:39:47
who's responsible and who's accountable.
1:39:49
And be explicit with that in your your roles and definitions.
1:39:52
As I mentioned a couple of times, prioritization is so key
1:39:55
for yourself, 100%. You need to be prioritized on
1:39:59
what's going to move the needle. What's the biggest bang for your
1:40:01
buck? What's the most productive?
1:40:03
Use of your time that needs to trickle down into all of the
1:40:06
rest of the people of your business and they need to know
1:40:09
what is priority. If you've got like all of this
1:40:11
stuff to do what is the most important that you need to be
1:40:15
thinking about or or completing or getting every day and then
1:40:19
delegating workflows. As I mentioned, this is going to
1:40:23
become something just natural for you once you've done it a
1:40:25
few times the first system, it's gonna be a little difficult.
1:40:28
You're going to get frustrated. You're gonna have to have some
1:40:30
patience with people. But as you get better and better
1:40:33
this and you build it one system and then another system,
1:40:35
everyone is going to get easier and every system is going to
1:40:38
give you more time to then better focus and put more time
1:40:42
and attention into, you know, building out your business
1:40:45
productivity planning. This is another thing where you
1:40:48
as a business owner doing proper planning is going to be
1:40:50
essential. And that is another skill, like
1:40:53
a leadership skill that you're going to need to instill in your
1:40:56
project managers and your admin staff that, hey, you're not just
1:41:00
showing up to work and, and going through whatever you think
1:41:03
needs to get done this day and kind of slacking off the rest of
1:41:06
the day. Show up to work, put a plan in
1:41:08
place. What is happening today?
1:41:10
Same with your site managers. We got this host of frame.
1:41:13
What is the most important thing we need to do today?
1:41:16
What is our goal today? Who is going to be responsible?
1:41:19
Have a little team meeting 5 minutes explicitly you tell
1:41:22
them, this is how I want you to run the job site.
1:41:25
This is how I want you to plan your day, all those kind of
1:41:28
things. And then document it and your
1:41:29
team is going to start to take the ball and run with it.
1:41:31
The last point I'm going to mention for team management is
1:41:34
the training and performance tracking.
1:41:36
You show up on site, you're a new guy, greenhorn, and it's
1:41:40
like, I'm here, OK, go over there, RIP apart that header,
1:41:44
that wall, or go move this material right there.
1:41:47
Essentially no training involved.
1:41:49
It's just like they'll figure it out.
1:41:50
If they make a mistake, I'll help them a little bit.
1:41:52
That is a poor way to 1st invest in your people.
1:41:55
These people are valuable. They are a resource to your
1:41:59
company and if you're not training them, you cannot expect
1:42:02
them to know what they're doing or function efficiently or work
1:42:07
as a team. You need to be able to train
1:42:09
people. Even if they've got five years
1:42:11
of of construction experience and some other company and they
1:42:15
come into your company, they're still going to need to know how
1:42:18
you want things to unfold. They're going to need some sort
1:42:21
of employee handbook in place so that they know specifically
1:42:24
what's happening and that feeling for them of like, wow,
1:42:26
this place is organized. They gave me this handbook.
1:42:29
I understand what's going on, introduced me to the people on
1:42:31
site. We went through that onboarding
1:42:33
checklist. They've got all these like
1:42:35
performance tracking. I like to have a a
1:42:38
self-assessment. So if you've got a Carpenter,
1:42:41
how much experience do you have in these different areas?
1:42:43
Framing a wall, installing baseboard, hanging a door right
1:42:47
You you've got all this different stuff and they
1:42:49
essentially rate themselves one. No idea what this even is never
1:42:54
done it not experience right. 2 might be like I've assisted
1:42:57
someone else. 3 is like, I can get this in place, but I'm not
1:43:01
really that great at it. 4 is like handle it myself. 5 is, and
1:43:06
the, you know, best person in the world to, to, to do this
1:43:09
job. So how have them do a
1:43:11
self-assessment. And then the goal is wherever
1:43:13
they start now, you know, OK, this person is strong in these
1:43:16
areas. I'm gonna help even put them in
1:43:19
that position where they can excel or let them know these are
1:43:22
the areas we're going to work on because I need you to be more
1:43:24
rounded or I need, I really, I need someone who's more
1:43:26
experienced than this. And now you can track it
1:43:29
overtime. And then from there, I like to
1:43:32
have videos available like I mentioned earlier, for
1:43:35
especially those guys who are new, you're not really
1:43:37
experienced here. Go watch these couple of YouTube
1:43:40
videos on how to frame this or or finish this or whatever.
1:43:44
The videos don't have to be perfect, but they should be
1:43:47
somewhat reasonably in line with the way that you do things.
1:43:51
And now they're not starting from scratch.
1:43:53
At least they understand their mind, how this should look and
1:43:55
how it should come together. And their performance on site is
1:43:58
just gonna be so much better. And they're gonna feel like you
1:44:01
are investing in them and you're gonna have less turnover of
1:44:04
people. One of the biggest kind of
1:44:06
issues employees have is they feel like they're stuck.
1:44:09
They're not growing, they're not appreciated.
1:44:11
There's no investment in them. They're just another warm body
1:44:15
to get some production done and maybe give them pizza, you know,
1:44:19
once a month at the end of the day or something like that.
1:44:21
That's not a good working environment and that's not where
1:44:24
someone wants to stay long term. The next systems we're talking
1:44:27
about is quality control systems.
1:44:29
And this is quality around your business.
1:44:31
It's not just like the house that you complete or whatever
1:44:35
project you're doing. It is how do we ensure quality
1:44:38
of experience for the client? How do we ensure quality of
1:44:42
onboarding for new employees? So really having quality
1:44:46
benchmarks across your organization and they need to be
1:44:49
standardized. What does good quality look
1:44:51
like? What does the list of, you know,
1:44:52
the checklist to get into place? And I've talked about quality
1:44:55
control checklist for on sites of like all those little things
1:44:58
for the different phases. You should also have those
1:45:00
quality control checklists that get reviewed quarterly or maybe
1:45:04
twice a year to ensure that we've put this system in place.
1:45:08
Is the system still getting used?
1:45:09
Is it a quality system that is actually making a difference in
1:45:13
our company? So there, there should be a
1:45:15
review process as well, these different systems, because I've
1:45:18
seen it before where we've got this system, we've got this
1:45:22
method. It's, it's working.
1:45:24
It seems to be working. And it kind of gets forgotten
1:45:26
about it. And then you go back and it's
1:45:28
like, I thought we had a, a system for this.
1:45:31
I thought we were doing it this way.
1:45:32
And everyone's like, oh, we haven't done that for months,
1:45:34
right? Because no one's checking.
1:45:36
There's no review process. So making sure that you have
1:45:39
some review in those defects and deliverables.
1:45:42
This comes down to performance tracking of your employees,
1:45:45
which I could have got to in in the previous one, but is part of
1:45:48
this one as well. Is doing performance reviews
1:45:51
with your employees, not in a way of like, hey, these are all
1:45:55
the things you suck at, get better at them.
1:45:57
But how can we help you? How can we support you?
1:46:00
This is room for improvement. I've noticed you are typically
1:46:04
showing up late or you're quite inconsistent when you, when you
1:46:09
come to site sometimes or whatever, right?
1:46:11
So lay that out and keep track of that stuff and have them
1:46:15
accountable for it. Again, like we've done a
1:46:17
performance review over the next three months, six months.
1:46:20
What do you think that you can improve on or what would you
1:46:23
like to learn or, or whatever. And then you write a couple
1:46:25
things down and then in three, six months later, you can tell
1:46:27
them like these are the things that you said you were planning
1:46:30
on improving or working on. Have we helped support you with
1:46:34
this? Do you feel like you have
1:46:35
improved and you're always moving the ball forward that
1:46:37
way? Any problem or issue that comes
1:46:40
up into your business is a diamond, is a gold, gold mine of
1:46:46
wealth and information. And start looking at the
1:46:49
problems and issues and frustrations in your business as
1:46:53
opportunities as positive things in your business.
1:46:56
So you hired a new person and they totally slacked off and the
1:47:02
client got upset. Why did this happen?
1:47:04
Do we hire the wrong person? Was a person not clear about
1:47:07
what they should be doing? Is this a difficult client?
1:47:10
Do we not set expectations right with them?
1:47:12
So whenever something happens in the business, especially if it's
1:47:14
a repetitive thing you want to go upstream of, like how could
1:47:18
we have sidestepped, mitigated, eliminated this problem or issue
1:47:23
from happening or coming up, you know, in a systemized way with
1:47:26
either documentation or training or communication.
1:47:30
What do we need to do to make sure this never happens again?
1:47:32
So start to to realize that all this firefighting and issues and
1:47:37
things that crop up, you can get upset about it, but then turn
1:47:40
around and and say like actually do something about it.
1:47:43
How can I make sure this never happens again?
1:47:45
How can I make sure my team is 100% crystal clear this is
1:47:48
unacceptable? Who's accountable for making
1:47:50
sure that this doesn't happen again?
1:47:52
How do I tell them about it? That's how quality rises in your
1:47:56
business. Then that last like 5 to 10% of
1:48:00
a project of whatever is happening.
1:48:02
It's probably an 8020 rule, right?
1:48:04
Where like a large perception of the quality of something happens
1:48:09
in that very minute fraction at the end where it's like it needs
1:48:12
to be 100% complete until it's 100% complete.
1:48:15
It looks like it's like poor quality.
1:48:17
This could be with your onboarding process.
1:48:19
This could be with follow-ups on sales calls.
1:48:22
This could be putting that final little piece of trim or the
1:48:25
paint touch ups on on the House that you just built and that
1:48:28
every single thing is checked off, 100% done, buttoned up
1:48:32
schedules and place complete off the plate.
1:48:34
Forget about it and move on to the next thing.
1:48:36
Don't let those last little bits linger and those little tiny
1:48:41
defects affect the quality of your systems.
1:48:44
So now we're going to go over using systems across different
1:48:48
projects and different functions of your business.
1:48:51
So how do you keep these systems working while you sleep?
1:48:54
You're going to lay out the system.
1:48:55
It's going to be a draft. You're going to start
1:48:57
implementing it. Implementing it's going to take
1:48:59
time. You can expect some friction.
1:49:01
You can expect you guys not to get it.
1:49:03
You can expect mistakes to happen.
1:49:04
Just realize that the most perfect system is going to have
1:49:08
issues and problems with it and that can be expected and that's
1:49:12
how you improve. One of the first systems I did
1:49:14
when we were modeling a bunch of houses and I had a 2 crews
1:49:18
actually, but one foreman in specific.
1:49:20
That was a little more experience and I wanted to test
1:49:21
out a system with them. So I created this this document.
1:49:24
I wanted them to start do job costing.
1:49:26
This was like 17 years ago or something when you know the
1:49:30
Internet and mobile phones and apps and all that stuff was not
1:49:33
where it is at today. But I wanted them to pretty much
1:49:35
document the things that I had estimated how much time they
1:49:38
were spending on them. And I created this paper.
1:49:41
I thought the paper would be easier because they're on site.
1:49:43
They don't even have to log into anything, just fill it out.
1:49:45
I left it with them for a couple of days, came back to the site
1:49:48
and I looked at the paper and it's like half filled out.
1:49:50
There's coffee stains on it. It's crumpled up.
1:49:52
It's not accurate whatsoever. And I'm just like, this was a
1:49:54
mess, right? So no matter how good of a
1:49:56
system or intention you have, you can expect it's not going to
1:49:59
be used properly or you've miscommunicated something or
1:50:02
there's going to be mistakes in it.
1:50:04
It just happens. And then assigning systems to
1:50:07
your people, your project managers, this is the SOP.
1:50:10
Follow this. If there's a problem with it, If
1:50:13
you're running into issues, I want you to then put this
1:50:16
forward as how can we improve this process?
1:50:18
Give us some feedback because our business is not perfect.
1:50:22
The system is not perfect. We want your input.
1:50:25
So get your input from your people and have them be able to
1:50:29
update processes and systems, not just like on a whim.
1:50:32
So everyone's adding their own thing to it, but they can bring
1:50:35
it to the team. And it's like, yeah, that makes
1:50:37
sense. Let's, you know, change that
1:50:38
process or let's add that extra step, or let's clarify this
1:50:42
documentation. Or maybe it's time to upgrade
1:50:45
this video because it's from five years ago.
1:50:47
We don't even use that software anymore.
1:50:48
So whatever it may be, right? But that's how you keep these
1:50:50
systems working while you sleep because you know are no longer
1:50:54
operator or creator of the system.
1:50:56
You've built the system. Now you hand it off and you
1:51:00
delegate the rest of it and the improvement to your team and you
1:51:03
give them again some guidelines like a system, a system that's
1:51:06
getting pretty meta there. But now there may be points
1:51:09
where you are like, this is all good, Derek.
1:51:11
I've build out systems and I've got all these little
1:51:13
compartmentalized SOP's and now it's getting pretty out there as
1:51:17
far as we've got like 100 different stops.
1:51:19
If you got 100 SOP's, something's gone wrong.
1:51:21
I like to have one big SOP for different functions of the
1:51:24
business. You might have a few one offs if
1:51:26
there's something very specific. But if there's a lot of
1:51:29
complexity and you are getting overwhelmed or you have like
1:51:33
very large project that you're doing and you feel like your
1:51:37
systems can't keep up, that's First off a good opportunity to
1:51:41
build a better system or think about this in a bigger way.
1:51:44
Second, it's also a good opportunity for you to go back
1:51:47
to the drawing board. Not that you're going to scrap
1:51:49
what you got, but realizing that we need to organize this better.
1:51:53
Maybe we need some sort of coding system.
1:51:55
Maybe we need a file system. Maybe we need a dashboard or
1:51:58
some sort of employee login, a better software to track all
1:52:01
these shops and bring everything together.
1:52:04
Maybe we need to reach out to a company like ours so we can show
1:52:07
you what structure we've used with much larger companies to
1:52:10
help keep everything organized and have employees be able to
1:52:13
access everything. So just because something is
1:52:15
getting confusing or you feel like it's getting messy, doesn't
1:52:18
mean that you should just leave it or that is not working.
1:52:23
You need to start to simplify stuff.
1:52:25
Maybe you get rid of some things or you need to kind of pair it
1:52:29
down or streamline it. Because what can happen is you
1:52:31
keep adding and adding and adding and adding without taking
1:52:34
away and it becomes this kind of monstrosity or can anyways.
1:52:37
And then people don't know where to find things.
1:52:39
And that's why you need some structure table of contents
1:52:41
dashboards, very structured, organized by functions and, and
1:52:46
have organization with inside all of your systems at a much
1:52:50
larger level. One way I like to do this is we
1:52:53
have a complete workflow, all of the systems, so project
1:52:57
management, marketing, human resources, and then it's got all
1:53:01
of the workflows underneath those categories.
1:53:03
So at one glance, you can see the entire group of workflows
1:53:08
under every function for the entire business, Everything you
1:53:11
could possibly want is there. And then within each of those
1:53:14
workflows, there's a link to the SOP document, there's a link to
1:53:18
training folders, there's a link to forms that you need, whatever
1:53:21
you need to complete that, Yep, there's a link to that resource
1:53:23
and it tells you what resource that is.
1:53:25
So there is a way to really get everything, no matter how big of
1:53:30
a business, you have to be able to either zoom out or zoom in.
1:53:33
That's how you essentially work at a very complex level by
1:53:36
bringing simplicity to it. Now, your systems are also going
1:53:40
to have to change as you scale. Most of the systems like your
1:53:43
project management software or your file management, like the
1:53:46
software type of stuff that can typically scale up and down to
1:53:51
any kind of level that you're going to get to getting to that
1:53:53
10 million level. Any, any project management
1:53:56
software that's decent is going to get you to 10/20 thirty 40
1:53:59
million. You know, to get you up to that
1:54:01
10 million, 20 million mark your systems that you have,
1:54:04
essentially what you're probably going to need to change is or
1:54:07
just it's more of an adding process is that upper management
1:54:10
layer that I mentioned before that you're probably filling all
1:54:12
those boxes. Now you need to have better
1:54:15
systems that someone can manage at a greater scale.
1:54:18
And then finally, you know, improving systems, essentially
1:54:20
removing bottlenecks. You want to always be asking for
1:54:23
feedback, Premier employees and have a culture of you know, good
1:54:27
is not good enough. We want great and if a system is
1:54:31
good and is working, but you feel you could be of
1:54:34
improvement, you have ideas for something we can implement
1:54:37
whatever it is, you always want to have that feedback loop and
1:54:41
that kind of openness that no idea is a dumb idea.
1:54:44
Essentially of your employees, if they, if they're actually
1:54:48
honestly trying to help you, like, hey, maybe we should
1:54:51
purchase tool or, or thing that I used to work my other business
1:54:55
or hey, you know, what about doing it this way?
1:54:57
You want all of that coming into the business and, and also that
1:55:01
communication, like we really want your ideas.
1:55:03
Doesn't mean we're going to implement everything or, or take
1:55:05
everything to into account, but we really appreciate your input.
1:55:08
This gives your team buy in to the systems.
1:55:11
It gives the team buy in to the company.
1:55:12
And when you've implemented something that an employee has
1:55:16
told you about, like, Hey, could we do it this way?
1:55:19
Or hey, have you tried this and you implement it right away?
1:55:22
The stock of the company and that employees eyes goes way up
1:55:26
and they feel like, wow, I they made their mark and they're,
1:55:28
they're contributing to something more than just, you
1:55:30
know, building a house and and getting a paycheck at the end of
1:55:34
the day. Now I know building powerful
1:55:36
systems can be a bit overwhelming, but it's really
1:55:38
important to build them. So don't underestimate them.
1:55:41
And again, if you need my help with systemizing your company,
1:55:44
you can apply to work directly with me using the first link in
1:55:48
the description. These are the scaling mistakes
1:55:53
that can trap construction companies.
1:55:55
You've learned how to scale your business, but these are
1:55:59
roadblocks or pitfalls that I see can cause construction
1:56:03
companies to go off the rails, to not reach your full potential
1:56:07
or create a lot of difficulty in actually getting to where you
1:56:11
want to go. These aren't minor mistakes.
1:56:13
There are structural failures that can completely destroy your
1:56:16
margins, your projects and your reputation that may have taken
1:56:19
you years to build. Even if your company is running
1:56:21
very smoothly, small cracks or gaps can cause big problems or
1:56:26
issues when you start to scale because all of those little kind
1:56:29
of inefficiencies or small gaps, cracks can escalate and create,
1:56:34
you know, major stress for you when they become bigger problems
1:56:37
later on. So my client Shevin, they scale
1:56:39
25 million plus after fixing some major mistakes in their
1:56:42
construction company. And these are a couple of them
1:56:45
that they worked on and some that I see kind of time and time
1:56:48
again. The number one is for getting
1:56:50
the client. It's kind of funny, but it's not
1:56:52
honey. But I, I can see this in
1:56:54
companies and you start to pick up on this mentality of
1:56:57
companies that you may have done this with the subcontractor
1:57:00
where you've worked with them for years.
1:57:02
They start getting bigger, they start getting more projects and
1:57:04
all of a sudden you feel like you're small potatoes.
1:57:07
They're not really answering your calls.
1:57:09
They're estimates are way off pricing and they take forever
1:57:12
and they just, it seems like they reach a level of success or
1:57:16
of projects and things just get really slacked.
1:57:20
Don't let this happen to your business.
1:57:22
It can be really tempting when things get busy.
1:57:24
You've got lots of money coming in, you're profitable, you've
1:57:27
got some systems in place, your teams doing well, and you kind
1:57:29
of have this lazy fair. You know, you're just a little
1:57:32
bit slack. You're not kind of showing up
1:57:34
for work is enough communication with clients.
1:57:36
It's like, yeah, whatever, I'm going to have another one, you
1:57:39
know, next week or whatever. So don't let this happen to you.
1:57:41
You always want to have that client experience and very high
1:57:44
and ingrained in your team, in your mentality that you go above
1:57:47
and beyond for your clients. You set up the systems around
1:57:50
it, but don't let that toxic kind of thought come into where
1:57:55
it's like they're just another client, just another number,
1:57:57
right? And you want to be able to train
1:57:59
your managers so the quality is always high and the experience
1:58:02
is always high and good communication.
1:58:05
So you can start to pick up and recognize this if it's, if it's
1:58:07
happening in your business and that the clients always feel
1:58:11
like they're in the loop. They know what's going on, you
1:58:13
know, hiding anything or you're not letting things slide because
1:58:16
they're not important. That's the last thing you want a
1:58:19
client to feel like is there. They're just there to generate
1:58:21
money for you and you don't really care about them.
1:58:23
They're not scaling. The internal communication,
1:58:25
another huge roadblock pitfall. The teams gonna grow.
1:58:30
You're gonna need to lead your team.
1:58:31
You're gonna lead your team through either other managers of
1:58:34
your business. So you're gonna have less 1 to
1:58:35
1, less in the trenches sort of information coming to you.
1:58:40
And communication can break down.
1:58:42
One department's not talking to another department.
1:58:45
You start to get silos where the site managers are like they know
1:58:50
what's happening on site. Your admin person, you know,
1:58:53
you've got your office staff and no one's really communicating.
1:58:56
There's none of this back and forth communication that is
1:58:59
essential. So everyone knows what's
1:59:01
happening. So things are dropped and and
1:59:03
things like that. So you're gonna have to outline
1:59:06
in your employee handbook and throw your organization.
1:59:08
This is how we communicate. You know, these are the regular
1:59:11
meetings we have. We have a weekly production
1:59:13
meeting. We've got a monthly operations
1:59:16
meeting. We've got, you know, maybe
1:59:17
quarterly review meeting with, with the the upper management.
1:59:21
What are those meetings? Your site, guys, Maybe they have
1:59:24
site meeting on site and then like how does everybody supposed
1:59:28
to communicate? Do they use Slack?
1:59:30
What's a project management software?
1:59:31
How should they be communicating?
1:59:33
What constitutes an e-mail? So I'm going into a lot of
1:59:36
detail here, but you can see like really outlining, this is
1:59:38
how you communicate. This is the things you should be
1:59:41
communicating about. These are the meetings.
1:59:43
We have to make sure everyone is on the same page and it should
1:59:46
be very ingrained. That's how you create a
1:59:48
communication culture and structure that can grow as you
1:59:51
scale because people are going to know what's going on.
1:59:53
Priorities, as I mentioned before are really important.
1:59:56
And then having key metrics as well is the communication
1:59:59
between the team and clients and, and everybody is important,
2:00:03
But also the communication of like financials, real business
2:00:06
direction, the vision mission. These types of things are going
2:00:10
to become more and more important as you start to scale
2:00:11
and grow. And you are providing that, that
2:00:14
vision as a leader more because you're not going to have that
2:00:18
one to one back and forth with all of your employees as much as
2:00:22
when you scale. Now another thing when you start
2:00:24
to scale is you're going to have more, more money.
2:00:26
Both in revenue flowing through your business, your bank
2:00:29
accounts are gonna look a lot better.
2:00:31
Hopefully your profit, your paycheck, everything is gonna
2:00:34
increase. And this is a big risk because
2:00:38
now if you make a mistake, you know the project is
2:00:41
unprofitable, the project is only $100,000, you lose maybe,
2:00:44
you know, $5000, not a big deal. You can recoup that pretty
2:00:48
easily on the next one. If you're doing $1,000,000
2:00:50
project and you're over $50,000, that could be a big hit to your
2:00:56
company if you don't have a 50,000 dollars in the bank that
2:00:59
you can utilize to, to make, you know, up for a loss.
2:01:02
Hopefully you never have a loss on a project.
2:01:04
But as you scale, you have to have larger reserves of cash
2:01:09
available and you have to have better systems in place and
2:01:13
financial controls and reporting to make sure things aren't going
2:01:16
off the rails. Because our $1,000,000 project,
2:01:19
if you get to the end of the project, that's when you know if
2:01:21
you made money or lost money, you're in a really bad spot.
2:01:25
You can't make any changes. Whereas if you have the right
2:01:28
job costing, please, you're halfway through the project and
2:01:31
you've spent $600,000 on the project so far, but you can only
2:01:34
invoice 500,000, you're out $100,000.
2:01:38
You know, something has gone wrong and you, you need to look
2:01:41
into it. Maybe there's a way that we can
2:01:43
close off this project more efficiently, whatever it may be,
2:01:46
but at least you have some sort of control over the rest of the
2:01:49
project instead of getting to the end and finding out that,
2:01:52
you know, everything went bad. And more revenue doesn't mean
2:01:54
more profit. So I hope I ingrain this into
2:01:57
you in the early sections of this video.
2:01:59
You need to increase your margins because just going from
2:02:02
1,000,000 to 2 million means nothing.
2:02:04
Is much better to run $1,000,000 business with a big margin for
2:02:08
profit than to run a $2,000,000 business where you're not making
2:02:11
any profit. It's much easier not to make
2:02:13
money on a with a larger business if things go sideways.
2:02:16
So you definitely need to keep track of that.
2:02:19
And then the final point I'm going to make here on on the
2:02:21
margins and finances is stay humble and don't spend money you
2:02:26
haven't received yet. I made this problem for myself
2:02:29
and it was really hard to get out of without even realizing it
2:02:33
because I just didn't have the wherewithal or the checks and
2:02:35
balances or the financial controls in place.
2:02:37
It's very easy. You just landed a big project,
2:02:40
you got a big deposit, $1,000,000 project based, one
2:02:43
you've ever done. And now it's like, oh, I can
2:02:45
finally go out and buy that that new truck or maybe I get a boat
2:02:48
or we're taking the family on vacation for a couple of weeks.
2:02:50
It can get really easy and it's like I earn this.
2:02:53
I've been working so hard for so many years.
2:02:55
Finally I get a big project or finally we got some money in the
2:02:58
bank. If you're not running it by your
2:02:59
financials actually what's on paper, then you are in for
2:03:04
trouble and hot water. Just because things are up to
2:03:06
date doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.
2:03:08
You know, next month, maybe something bad happens, you get
2:03:11
unprofitable project, somebody gets, you know, sick.
2:03:13
Your main guy has to leaves for another company, whatever it may
2:03:15
be. So make sure that you are
2:03:17
spending wisely and you've got, you know, cash reserves.
2:03:20
Not taking care of early employees is is another thing.
2:03:22
The health of a business can often be attributed to how long
2:03:25
the employees have been at that business.
2:03:27
If you go to a company though, and you're like, you see someone
2:03:31
and they've been there for 10-15 years, you know that that is a
2:03:36
good company to be working with because the employee is
2:03:38
obviously getting benefits and enjoys working there enough to
2:03:42
stay that long. And the employer is has hired
2:03:45
the right person that's performing at their job and able
2:03:48
to to keep an employee that long.
2:03:50
So if your employees are always turning over within one to two
2:03:53
years, you need to take a hard look at your HR systems, at your
2:03:57
hiring methods, at your compensation packages.
2:04:01
Yes, you're going to have some turnover.
2:04:03
There's gonna be an odd, you know, higher in the bunch or
2:04:05
some of that moves on. But if you've done your hiring
2:04:07
and you know your roles and you have an ideal employee in mind,
2:04:11
there's no reason your average employee shouldn't stick around
2:04:14
for three to five years. That should be average.
2:04:16
You should have some that are maybe going to go to 10 years
2:04:19
and the odd 1, you know, 1-2 years, maybe they bounce off.
2:04:22
It is very expensive to always have to hire and train new
2:04:25
people. It's much better to pay your
2:04:27
seasoned people a little bit more and give them regular
2:04:30
raises and keep them happy than it is to always have to bring in
2:04:33
new people. It also it improves your
2:04:35
business from just the standing of subcontractors that they have
2:04:39
relationships, project managers, you know, internal team dynamics
2:04:43
and clients. If clients have done a project
2:04:45
with you and then they refer someone and that person can have
2:04:49
the same project manager or they come back to you five years or
2:04:52
10 years later, that same person is still working there.
2:04:54
You know, that's just a fantastic experience and another
2:04:57
reason why they're going to refer to choose you over another
2:05:01
company. Your early employees, well is
2:05:03
helping them in their role, but also helping them become
2:05:06
leaders. When you can build leaders in
2:05:09
your organization along with the systems like those are the two
2:05:12
things essentially, you need leaders and you need systems as
2:05:15
the people in the systems and you know, taking care of us
2:05:17
early employees, they're going to have seen the business from
2:05:20
day one or very early on. They're going to have seen the
2:05:24
progress in yourself as a person, as a leader.
2:05:26
They're going to see the growth of the company.
2:05:28
They're going to be the perfect kind of people to be in
2:05:31
leadership positions. And even if there are
2:05:33
leadership, I worked with a guy who had been working with this
2:05:36
construction company. He had been there for I think
2:05:39
about 15 years. He was still a site labourer.
2:05:42
He didn't have any leadership role, but he was still a leader
2:05:46
in the company because people really respected him.
2:05:48
They respected his worth. He really set the stage for new
2:05:53
employees coming in. You know, you show up on time,
2:05:55
you work hard, you have fun. This is how you talk to people.
2:05:58
This is how you, you know, do this.
2:06:00
And he had the track record of, he knew everybody's job in the
2:06:04
business essentially, if you had been there for so long.
2:06:07
So those are key assets and key people inside your business and
2:06:10
you want to make sure you take care of them and you appreciate
2:06:13
them. And then finally, the last thing
2:06:15
to mention as far as roadblocks is doing too many things.
2:06:19
I've outlined A-Z how to scale a construction business here.
2:06:23
As you can see, there's a lot to it.
2:06:24
There's a lot of components. You need to set priorities and
2:06:28
you need to realize you can only do what you can do.
2:06:31
If you're doing too many things at once, you're going to be
2:06:33
ineffective at all of them. You're gonna just spin your
2:06:36
wheels and not get anywhere. What is the most important
2:06:38
specific task in your business? What's the most specific thing
2:06:40
about that task that I can improve?
2:06:42
Always be drilling down to like, what do I need to do?
2:06:45
Often planning is a big part of it.
2:06:47
Like get that plan in place, but like today, this week, next
2:06:50
month, this quarter, this year, and you'll have your yearly
2:06:54
goals. And it should all trail back
2:06:56
down to like, what do I need to do today?
2:06:59
What is my top priority for today?
2:07:01
What are my top three priorities for this week that I need to get
2:07:04
done on my business? Not just like get an estimate
2:07:08
out or, you know, manage a project.
2:07:10
It has to be like I need to put this system in place.
2:07:13
I need to figure out this financial controls.
2:07:14
I need to talk to my bookkeeper about improving the way that the
2:07:17
reporting to me. Learning to say no is is a big
2:07:20
thing as well. It's not that you're not you
2:07:22
don't want to do these things or that you're looking down on
2:07:25
anything. It's simply you're making a
2:07:28
conscious decision in your mind. This is what I want.
2:07:31
I need time to spend on this. If I say yes to this, that means
2:07:36
it's going to take away from my goal and it's going to take me
2:07:38
longer to get to where I want to be.
2:07:41
And even if you think like I do have time, I'm not doing
2:07:44
anything this Saturday. I could easily take this on.
2:07:47
Realize that especially reoccurring stuff that you
2:07:50
sometimes need gaps and space in your life when you're bored.
2:07:54
If you're kind of like, oh, I'm a little bit bored or it feels
2:07:57
like I'm not doing anything, I'm not being productive.
2:07:59
And I am so much this way. I need to be checking stuff off
2:08:02
my list to feel productive, to feel good about myself.
2:08:05
But I also realize like sometimes I just need space to
2:08:08
do some reading, maybe some studying, go for a walk, spend
2:08:11
time with the family, create some space in your life and
2:08:14
realize what it feels like to be retired, even if you're retired
2:08:19
for one day or one hour to not always be on the go and doing
2:08:23
everything because that's when you have your best ideas.
2:08:25
That's when your body can reset and you'll be more productive
2:08:28
for, you know, the week or the month ahead and all these kind
2:08:31
of things. So really learn to say no to the
2:08:33
things that don't serve you in your life.
2:08:34
And then a delegate this list, my favorite list.
2:08:37
I like to do lists and having lists for everything and
2:08:39
checklist and all that stuff. But my favorite just as delegate
2:08:42
this list if I'm doing something and I'm like, this is so
2:08:47
tedious. I don't want to be doing this or
2:08:48
this is really quite easy. Why don't why doesn't someone
2:08:50
else doing this? I put it on my delegate this
2:08:53
list. After a while, you're going to
2:08:55
have 10/20/30, maybe 100 different things on your
2:08:58
delegate this list and your goal is to get these off your plate.
2:09:02
If you've got like an admin person or personal assistant,
2:09:05
you can often like hand a lot of these off to them, but some of
2:09:08
them may go to other people on your team, even if you don't
2:09:10
have a person in your business. And now they can take care of
2:09:13
this stuff. Create that list.
2:09:14
Because now when you do hire an admin person or have a personal
2:09:18
assistant or somebody that can help you with some of the stuff,
2:09:21
you have a list that you can go to and you can, you can start to
2:09:23
build that roles and responsibilities and things that
2:09:26
they're going to do on a daily basis or weekly basis from that
2:09:29
list. And you can start to build a
2:09:31
process that system, the SOP, the training video and get all
2:09:35
that stuff off your list. So you just got a complete
2:09:38
blueprint for reaching 8 figures with your construction company.
2:09:42
This video has all the info you need from scaling your company
2:09:45
to increasing your margins to building efficient systems.
2:09:49
The people I mentioned succeeded in this video.
2:09:51
James systemizing his $5,000,000 construction company, Rob
2:09:55
doubling his revenue in 12 months, and Yannis who doubled
2:09:58
his profit margins in only two months.
2:10:01
They all had one thing in common, they didn't just watch
2:10:04
content, they actually executed on what they learned.
2:10:07
So if you want to scale your construction company faster
2:10:11
without any headaches, you can apply for the Rapid Result
2:10:14
Creators Coaching program where I work one-on-one with you and
2:10:18
give you everything you need to scale your company.
2:10:22
But this isn't for everybody. I only work with those who are
2:10:25
committed to scaling their company because those are the
2:10:27
people I can help get results. So if that's you, click the link
2:10:32
in the description below and let's scale your company
2:10:35
together.