Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / More Progress In 6 Months Than The Previous 7 Years - Sascha Porteous - Live Timber Renovations

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More Progress In 6 Months Than The Previous 7 Years - Sascha Porteous - Live Timber Renovations · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  Vermeer, Sasha, looking forward to chatting with you.
• 0:03
  So we've been working together now for a bit over six months
• 0:07
  building out your business and wanted to go over kind of your
• 0:10
  your experience so far, some of the the winds you've had.
• 0:13
  But before that, do you want to just let us know where you were
• 0:17
  kind of before we started coaching?
• 0:19
  So about half a year ago or so, what state was your business in?
• 0:22
  Where were you at and what was their reason that you decided to
• 0:25
  to look for a coach? Yeah, I mean, before I started
• 0:29
  working through the coaching program with you, Derek, my
• 0:33
  business was in a state of chaos.
• 0:35
  It's probably the best way to explain.
• 0:37
  It always felt like I was just on a hamster wheel, going from 1
• 0:41
  task to the next. Yes, I was getting lots of
• 0:45
  things done. Yes, I was working hard, but it
• 0:47
  seemed like that list was never getting any shorter.
• 0:51
  And while the work was getting done, I didn't really feel like
• 0:56
  I was working on the business. And so over the past couple
• 1:00
  years, I've been trying to grow the business, kind of step back
• 1:02
  from being on the tools myself, kind of building a team.
• 1:07
  And you know, I, I did manage to do that.
• 1:11
  I got to the point where I had two guys working for me, but it
• 1:15
  still always felt chaotic. It always felt like I was kind
• 1:19
  of putting out fires. And like I said, it never really
• 1:22
  felt like I was making improvements to the business
• 1:26
  itself. That's why I decided to to reach
• 1:31
  out to you and and sign up for the coaching program.
• 1:34
  Yeah, it's been great. Your progress has been quite
• 1:38
  quick and you're very detailed and meticulous person.
• 1:43
  It shows in your work. And I think we've now utilized
• 1:46
  that and you know, applied that to your to your business and the
• 1:48
  systems as well. Before we started working
• 1:51
  together, was there any hesitation or considerations,
• 1:55
  things you were kind of unsure of, you know, deciding to to
• 1:59
  move forward with the coaching program?
• 2:01
  Yeah, for sure. I mean it first.
• 2:03
  First off, the investment, you know, not only just in time,
• 2:07
  right? Because as I said, in order for
• 2:09
  this to be successful, what I've learned is that you have to
• 2:13
  invest time into it, right? So you have to be willing to sit
• 2:16
  down and actually work on the business.
• 2:18
  That doesn't mean sending emails or talking to your suppliers or
• 2:24
  talking to your clients. That means planning and
• 2:26
  strategizing and, and working on systems to help build the
• 2:31
  future, right? And so the first one is the
• 2:34
  investment in time, which was kind of scary because I was
• 2:38
  already feeling like I was maxed out.
• 2:41
  I was already working 60 hours a week and that investment of
• 2:44
  time, I didn't know where that was going to come from, right?
• 2:47
  So that was the first one. And the second one was the
• 2:50
  investment in dollars or value, right?
• 2:53
  I mean, you're providing a service saying like me, I
• 2:55
  provide a service and we charge for that.
• 2:57
  So I felt like when money was already being accounted for in
• 3:01
  other places, and so the dollar investment there was at first
• 3:07
  for me, it was kind of a hard pill to swallow just because
• 3:12
  there was so many other spots where I thought that money could
• 3:16
  go, right. Obviously, we'll probably get
• 3:18
  into the value that I've seen back from that, but those are my
• 3:22
  two biggest kind of roadblocks at the beginning was the the
• 3:27
  investment of time and the investment of money.
• 3:29
  Yeah, very common with with clients.
• 3:33
  You, as you mentioned, you typically already kind of maxed
• 3:36
  out. You've got maybe constrained
• 3:39
  budgets and it's, you know, do I invest in some other part of the
• 3:42
  business? Do do I invest in coaching?
• 3:45
  And there's always that kind of uncertainty in the back of the
• 3:50
  mind of, you know, is this the right move?
• 3:52
  And but you, you managed to get it past that hurdle and start
• 3:55
  working together now in the first one, two months working
• 3:59
  together, what were some of the quick wins or aha moments?
• 4:03
  What stands out for you that that we were able to get in
• 4:06
  place? Yeah.
• 4:07
  I mean that's the biggest wins at the beginning were one of
• 4:10
  them was clarity. So just kind of going through
• 4:13
  the business kind of you're very detailed and you were very
• 4:18
  thorough and you asked me lots of questions and you tried to
• 4:21
  really understand my business. And by explaining my business,
• 4:24
  it kind of maybe brought to light some areas that I was
• 4:28
  falling short in or some areas that we need to to work on.
• 4:32
  Of course, you helped me with that as well, But just getting
• 4:36
  kind of clarity on where I'm at right now and where I want to
• 4:40
  go. Those, those two things were
• 4:43
  really key for me. And then the other one was just
• 4:47
  having someone that you can go to besides your partner, in my
• 4:52
  case, my wife, who obviously I chat with, but she doesn't have
• 4:57
  any background or experience in carpentry, renovations or
• 5:00
  building. So she's a good, you know,
• 5:04
  person 2 maybe vent to or try and get some support from, but
• 5:08
  she can't really help in terms of giving solid advice with
• 5:15
  years of experience, right. So for me it was chatting with
• 5:19
  someone such as yourself who has solid experience and who's done
• 5:24
  this with other contractors to try and, and so that was really
• 5:29
  valuable for me just to be able to have that person to bounce
• 5:33
  some ideas off or just talk to certain problems that I'm having
• 5:37
  and to kind of realize that I'm probably not the only one going
• 5:40
  through that. And then to get some kind of
• 5:43
  quick solutions and some maybe some fixes or a road map of how
• 5:47
  we want to move forward to fix those things.
• 5:49
  Yeah, definitely the first sort of process with clients is out
• 5:55
  of everything that's happening. There's a lot of functions to
• 5:57
  the business. There's a lot of stuff going on,
• 6:00
  a lot of business and getting that clarity is, is huge of yes,
• 6:05
  there's these ten 2000 different things we could think about or
• 6:08
  work on or figure out. But what is the, you know, the
• 6:11
  big pieces or the main focus that we want to work on and what
• 6:15
  does that look like into the future?
• 6:17
  You know one 2-3 years down the road now as far as specific
• 6:23
  systems or knowledge that you gained, what comes to mind there
• 6:30
  as far as some of the, the, the systems processes, new process
• 6:35
  changes that that we put into place?
• 6:37
  Yeah. So the systems has been big one.
• 6:40
  I mean, we've kind of, we've kind of gone through a number of
• 6:44
  system implementations or changes.
• 6:48
  The biggest ones probably for me are the kind of the
• 6:53
  preconstruction agreement or system, which is essentially
• 6:59
  where we where I am now charging for gathering all the
• 7:05
  information for a client, right, that pre construction phase
• 7:08
  before any work gets done. So that's a big one because
• 7:12
  it's, it's helped. Well, my value, my I've been
• 7:18
  charging for that service, right.
• 7:20
  So we've, we've instrumented a system now where a client will
• 7:26
  pay for preconstruction agreement and just understanding
• 7:30
  how that works, how to implement it and then how to go about it
• 7:34
  and charge for it. Those were, that was a big one
• 7:36
  for me because basically every project that we do now has a pre
• 7:39
  construction agreement before we actually get into the build out
• 7:44
  of the natural brunt of it, you know, the demo or the framing or
• 7:50
  anything like that. So the preconstruction system or
• 7:54
  phase is a big win for sure. And then just getting the roles,
• 8:01
  defining the roles has also been really good.
• 8:04
  In terms of my team. Now I've got three guys that
• 8:07
  work for me. Each one of them has a very kind
• 8:10
  of clearly defined role that was really important as well as
• 8:15
  myself. I'm understanding what my role
• 8:18
  is and, and learning that, you know, there's a lot of things I
• 8:22
  used to do that I don't need to do.
• 8:24
  And so I've delegated those to other people, whether that's my
• 8:28
  administrator or my field staff or bookkeeper or whatever.
• 8:33
  And so understanding kind of what my role needs to be in the
• 8:36
  business was really important to see because what that has helped
• 8:41
  me do, it's helped me kind of buy back some of my time to then
• 8:44
  work on building systems for the business kind of moving forward.
• 8:49
  So yeah, just to just to clarify there two things I'd say would
• 8:54
  be that preconstruction system or phase and then defining the
• 8:58
  rules. Yeah, definitely those those are
• 9:01
  two big improvements and I believe in the beginning as well
• 9:05
  that you're the project management budgeting of the
• 9:09
  project was just sort of lumped in with your your overhead.
• 9:12
  So we help better define how much, you know, we actually
• 9:15
  charging for project management and then also we are
• 9:18
  incorporating the preconstruction process with,
• 9:20
  you know, the different parts of that.
• 9:22
  And so that you're, you're also getting paid for that work.
• 9:26
  And it's also it helps the sales flow a lot easier.
• 9:31
  You're not asking for a big commitment from someone into a
• 9:33
  construction agreement. You're, you're saying, let's,
• 9:35
  you know, plan this, let's figure it out, you know, let's
• 9:37
  work together. And that's a good kind of test.
• 9:40
  And then by the time you get to the actual construction
• 9:42
  contract, it's typically a much easier sale.
• 9:46
  And you've done a great job too. I know when we started you were
• 9:50
  still kind of jumping in on the tools.
• 9:53
  I think you had just one or maybe 2 employees at the time or
• 9:56
  I think 2 guys and getting over that.
• 10:00
  It's a bit mindset, it's a bit business structure of, you know,
• 10:03
  I need to use my management leadership skills to have people
• 10:07
  to, to go handle that and not kind of jump in as the hero.
• 10:11
  So I think that transition to fully off off the tools and then
• 10:14
  getting that clarity now with your, your foreman or right hand
• 10:18
  man on site site manager and defining kind of where the
• 10:22
  project management and site Superintendent management roles
• 10:25
  roles are has been pivotal. And I know like, you know,
• 10:29
  hiring project managers on the road map into the future as the
• 10:32
  business grows. I mean, we did some marketing
• 10:34
  improvements as well. And your business has grown
• 10:36
  quite a bit. It is busy season right now.
• 10:38
  So I know like 6 months in, you're still busy, you still got
• 10:42
  lots going on the preconstruction process, you
• 10:46
  know, has been, you're probably more involved there, which has
• 10:49
  created some more work. So it's, it's not that, you
• 10:52
  know, it kind of gets a little harder maybe before it gets
• 10:54
  better as you're implementing these systems and and putting
• 10:58
  things in place. But the production side of it is
• 11:02
  a lot easier with that with good preconstruction in place there.
• 11:07
  Can you talk maybe a little bit about the maybe marketing and
• 11:12
  sales process the the numbers as far as like how you kind of see
• 11:16
  improve profitability or financial clarity?
• 11:18
  I know I believe when we started as well, you weren't really
• 11:21
  super clear on, on your numbers, at least not like as current as
• 11:25
  they are today. Can you talk about maybe where
• 11:26
  you're at and and how things are now?
• 11:29
  Yeah. So as far as my numbers go, I
• 11:33
  was kind of for the last couple of years, I'd probably kind of
• 11:36
  say flat line around that eight, $900,000 mark.
• 11:41
  And so I think things were going fine.
• 11:45
  But really diving into the numbers really help clarify the
• 11:50
  importance of not not just knowing what your numbers are,
• 11:54
  but kind of knowing where you want to go as well, right.
• 11:58
  So it's really made me kind of look at my numbers a little
• 12:02
  closer more often, right? Whereas before I might go half a
• 12:07
  year without really looking at my books, now I try and review
• 12:10
  them at least once a month sometimes while I am trying to
• 12:14
  do it at least once a week now, right?
• 12:17
  To go through everything, kind of see where we're at.
• 12:20
  Because that knowing your numbers really it just gives you
• 12:24
  power. It gives you a lot of
• 12:25
  information to make good decisions, right?
• 12:28
  Moving forward helps figure out what you actually need to
• 12:32
  charge, where there's areas that could be improved, all those
• 12:36
  kinds of things. So we've, I mean, we've worked
• 12:39
  on a lot of different areas. Marketing and sales has
• 12:43
  definitely been a big one for sure as well.
• 12:46
  So with marketing, most of my work was just coming in through
• 12:51
  word of mouth or through designers that we work with.
• 12:55
  But Derek was really, you kind of really pushed me to take
• 13:00
  advantage of some low hanging fruit like, you know, making
• 13:03
  lawn signs and putting those out front, making sure all my
• 13:07
  vehicles were deckled, making sure that the guys have T-shirts
• 13:12
  and hats and all that kind of stuff, right?
• 13:14
  So that just our image is kind of represented everywhere we go
• 13:18
  in a positive way. It's also kind of led into
• 13:22
  making that brochures it other things we've done are like
• 13:27
  monthly mailers, blog posts, all that kind of stuff.
• 13:31
  So those are all kind of, those are all fairly simple, easy
• 13:34
  things to do that we've all heard.
• 13:37
  But the value of implementing that stuff is just meant that my
• 13:42
  phone is ringing more often and we're getting a lot more
• 13:45
  inquiries. We worked on our website
• 13:48
  tweaking that. Like there's been so many
• 13:49
  improvements that we made. Now that I think of it, it's
• 13:52
  just they've all kind of compounded to every day make
• 13:56
  things a little bit easier. Yes, like you're saying, it's
• 13:59
  still, it's not like I'm out of the weeds or anything like that.
• 14:03
  There's still tons of work. I still feel like I have a very
• 14:07
  long list, but I do feel like that the I'm carving out time
• 14:12
  during the day and during the week to work on the business.
• 14:15
  So and as a result of that, you know, kind of rounding this out
• 14:19
  and going back to my numbers for the last couple of years, I
• 14:22
  wanted to hit that $1,000,000 mark.
• 14:24
  And so we just recently past that and you know looking at my
• 14:27
  numbers today for the last trailing 12 months, we're at
• 14:31
  1,150,000 and with this month combined to that, I think we're
• 14:36
  gonna be up 1.2 million. So definitely some improvements
• 14:42
  made there and excited to see where we're going to go from
• 14:45
  here. Definitely fantastic.
• 14:47
  It's great to see that growth. I believe you you recently added
• 14:51
  another team member too as well. So your teams growing, you're
• 14:55
  utilizing your, your admin support for some of that
• 14:57
  marketing stuff, as mentioned, you know, getting out some, some
• 15:00
  blog posts and social stuff and, you know, e-mail newsletters
• 15:03
  and, and all that good stuff. And yeah, the progress has been
• 15:07
  been great. So if, if, if we wouldn't have
• 15:10
  worked together for the past, you know, six months or whatever
• 15:13
  or so, where do you think you would have been or, or what
• 15:16
  like, you know, the two paths, what do you think would have,
• 15:20
  would have happened or where would you be now?
• 15:23
  Do you think probably just would have been doing the same thing
• 15:27
  over and over? I mean, I always, you know, want
• 15:30
  to improve. I always wanna do better.
• 15:32
  But it's very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of just
• 15:37
  doing the work. And by working with you, it's
• 15:43
  made me really be accountable to someone because, you know, you
• 15:47
  give me, you know, tasks and things that list of things to do
• 15:51
  every call. And I don't want to show up to
• 15:55
  the next call and say that I haven't done anything because
• 15:59
  then I'm just wasting my time, not only for myself, but for you
• 16:04
  too. So by having someone that you
• 16:07
  have to be accountable for it, it kind of forces your hand to,
• 16:11
  at least in my case, it forces my hand to to do the work.
• 16:16
  And so that's really made help me to carve out time to work on
• 16:21
  the business, which has been really, really valuable.
• 16:25
  But it's been like, as I said, great to see the, the, the
• 16:27
  progress you've done tremendous with the, with the program.
• 16:29
  You're very accountable, you know, moving, moving the ball
• 16:32
  forward every two weeks. And it's, it's been really great
• 16:36
  working together. Now if there's contractors out
• 16:38
  there, they're considering, you know, reaching out, getting some
• 16:40
  help. What would you tell those, those
• 16:43
  contractors who are maybe in your situation, you know, before
• 16:46
  just kind of worked and stressed out and not knowing kind of
• 16:50
  exactly which direction to go? Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:53
  I mean, I think it's my my feedback or advice would just
• 16:58
  tell them to invest in themselves, right.
• 17:01
  I mean, we as contractors, I think we, we put so much of our
• 17:07
  time and effort into to building your business and you know, a
• 17:12
  lot of us are working 1214 hour days.
• 17:17
  I know a lot of guys in this industry who are working
• 17:20
  evenings and weekends and they're not getting to spend
• 17:23
  time with their family or their kids or their partners or do
• 17:26
  their own hobbies or, or things like that.
• 17:28
  And it's easy to get kind of stuck in that hamster wheel and
• 17:33
  just say, oh, just work harder, work faster, all those things.
• 17:37
  But at the end of the day, that doesn't really solve the
• 17:40
  problem. And I was proof of that.
• 17:43
  I mean, I'd been running against that hamster wheel for the last
• 17:47
  seven years, eight years, doing my own thing.
• 17:50
  And sure, some improvements were made, but not nearly as many in
• 17:55
  the last seven years that I've made in the last six months.
• 17:58
  So, you know, by, by investing in yourself, you're also
• 18:04
  investing, you know, in your family, right?
• 18:06
  You're, you're, you're saying to them, look, I'm making this a
• 18:10
  priority so that I can figure out how to run a successful
• 18:16
  business so that I have time for the ones that you love or the
• 18:20
  people that you care about, people that you want to spend
• 18:23
  time with. Because I know it feels shitty
• 18:25
  to be working evenings and weekends when you know,
• 18:30
  everybody's out having fun and doing other things and you just
• 18:33
  feel like you can never be a part of that.
• 18:35
  So if you want, you know, to build a good business and you
• 18:41
  wanna have a good life as well, then I would say invest in
• 18:45
  yourself and reach out to Derek for some coaching.
• 18:49
  Great thanks so much. That is really why, you know, I
• 18:52
  do what I do and we would do what we do here.
• 18:54
  Wrappers, all creators is because, you know, I've been to
• 18:56
  that place just kind of fed up with like, is this all there is?
• 19:00
  Just working nonstop, dealing with fires, not getting paid
• 19:05
  enough to feel like you can kind of get out of that hamster wheel
• 19:08
  and understanding them. Some of the key dynamics and and
• 19:12
  you know, systems knowledge to that needs to go into place.
• 19:15
  And when you get those pieces working together, it's not
• 19:17
  instantaneous, but it does make for really quick progress.
• 19:21
  So yeah, I'm super happy to hear about that.
• 19:24
  Thanks so much for coming on here Sasha, and sharing your
• 19:26
  experience with all of. Us.
• 19:28
  Yeah, Yeah. Thanks so much, Jerry.