Building Teams That Produce Consistent Profits
Have you ever lost money on a project and thought it was primarily caused by your team’s lack of performance?
Do you ever feel like it’s hard to get your team to produce consistent results?
You know that when you’re building a house, you start with a solid foundation. You can’t build the first floor without a solid concrete slab in place.
And yet, many business owners get tripped up in the pitfalls that come from not having a solid foundation in place with their teams.
In today’s video, Randall Soules, David Hawke, and I talk about building solid foundations with teams that produce consistent profits. This episode was originally aired on their Remodeling Business Blueprint Podcast.
When you watch, you’ll discover a few things you can do to start making more profits on projects and get more consistent results from your team. You’ll also find out how to become the kind of company people are begging to work for, even in today’s competitive job market.
Employee Training That Works!
Do you yearn for a time when your team will produce more consistent results?
And do you ever get tired of the revenue rollercoaster that comes from inconsistent results?
One way to achieve consistency is by putting systems and processes in place with your team. I talked about this in my last post Creating a Culture Where Great People Want to Work.
The other important way is what we’re going to talk about today – training people to develop their skills and advance in the ranks so both they and the company are more successful.
But if you’ve never created a training program before, it can be hard to know where to begin.
In a time like we are in now, where there is a limited talent pool out there, the burden is on us as managers and leaders to develop our teams and make them great. Not only that but investing in training your people can actually add dollars to your bottom line because they’re better equipped to do their job efficiently with fewer mistakes.
Today in my interview with Todd Liles of Service Excellence Training and host of The Service Contractor podcast, he explains how to create a training plan so you can feel confident developing your team.
Todd and I will talk about:
- The 3 keys to a successful training program
- How to structure training
- What to cover so that you can teach your team your way to get the job done right.
Creating a Culture Where Great People Want to Work
When we think about work culture, some people think of mission statements and vision. Other people think it means touchy-feely stuff. Still others think it’s about rounds of beers. But I believe it’s about the environment you create that sets up a structure for consistent, excellent results, and creating an environment where great people want to work.
Many people in the building and remodeling industry started their businesses as one-man operations, or just a few people. They didn’t start out wanting to manage a team or even learn how to be a great leader. They just wanted to do good work, make great money, and have control over their own destiny. Then as they grew, they added people, and now find they spend a lot of their time managing, and not as much time doing what they love, and often, not making the money they want.
Truth is, managing people can be hard work. Yet building great teams is so important to the success of your business, it’s critical we talk about how you can do it well by shifting some of your management practices.
In today’s video I talk with Kyle Hunt, host of the Remodelers on the Rise , about how you can transform your company culture and build the kind of business great people want to work for with just a few changes.
How to Know if a Candidate is a Right Fit
When asked what their biggest frustration was, over 30% of managers surveyed said they wish they were better at hiring.
In the early stages of my career, I remember feeling that way as a manager. I was hiring a lot of people who, in the interview, came across as a good fit., but once they started workingand we got past the honeymoon phase, it became clear they weren’t the right fit. It was super frustrating.
Can you relate?
It’s all too easy to hire the wrong person. You quickly size up the candidate, you think of yourself as a good judge of character, and your busy, so you can’t take all day getting to know someone.
But those mistakes in the hiring process affect your bottom line in lost production and inefficiencies. Also, it costs $25,000 or more on average to turn over a new employee.
I learned from my early mistakes and in the process, I created a hiring and on-boarding process that is proven (by not just me but hundreds of clients) to get much better qualified and long-term employees.
In today’s video (and in the text below) we’ll talk about how you can get more insight into whether a candidate is the right fit, has the right skills, and will succeed in the job for years to come.
What Attracts A-Players?
When I first started my business, I’ll be honest: I was a horrible manager. I look back and cringe at how I begged and threatened people to get them to do what I wanted.
What I gave employees was a task list. I thought of each of them as a helper.
Then I started reading Stephen Covey’s books and I realized leadership is not about using people like tools. It’s about helping people reach their greatest potential.
This might sound fluffy, but it’s actually not.
In fact, what all of us want as leaders is to make more money, have more time in our day, and get back to loving what we do. Your most direct path to that is putting good team management practices in place.
I shifted my thinking to seeing employees as partners who could be accountable to specific results. My job as a leader was to tap into my team’s potential and set them up to win.
Today’s video is a discussion with Spencer Powell, host of the Builder Funnel Radio podcast.
I’ll explain how to shift from thinking of employees as helpers to seeing them as partners, what structures and systems you need to put in place for everyone to succeed, and how to motivate people to care about the job they do.
These practices not only free up your time and bring in more revenue, they also will have people knocking down your door to work for you.
Choose just 3 and stop the overwhelm!
When we reach this time of the year, some business owners feel overwhelmed – either by the thought of all of the planning, evaluating, and strategizing they need to do, or by the pressure of not meeting their goals as the year comes to a close. Or both!
It’s so easy to get caught in the trap of working really hard, without knowing what to focus on in order to achieve what we want. There’s so much to do, and we end up muddling through all of it. I’ve been there as a business owner myself.
What I’ve found is that if I shift my focus from assuming everything is important to instead thinking, “How long will this be important?” It’s much easier to see the 2 or 3 big things that really matter over the long haul.
By narrowing it down, I’m much more likely to succeed at those 2 or 3 major goals.
Our goals often revolve around those areas of our business where profits are bleeding out. In this weeks video I help you identify your top 3 most important places you may want to focus by going through the 8 areas of your business where profits are made and lost.
Planning for Profits – Your Company’s Budget
Imagine it’s December 2020, and you’re reviewing the results of your business for the past year and you notice that compared to 2019, your profits are WAY up, AND, you didn’t have to kill yourself to make it happen! How great will that be?!
That’s what’s possible when you operate your business with a plan. Planning for increased profits by creating an operating budget for your business. I don’t just mean a revenue plan (most people have one of those), I mean planning for bottom-line net profits and increased cash flow. In today’s video, I’m going to share with you the tools and steps to employ to help you do just that for your business!
Before I jump in, let me ask you a question. Are you one of those people who thinks that doing budgets for your company is a waste of time? Maybe you feel like you never meet your goals, so why bother. Or maybe you feel like it’s restrictive and limiting, and you want to have freedom and choices about what you do with your money?
It doesn’t have to be that way when budgeting is approached with the right mindset. In fact, it can be the most empowering and liberating thing you’ve ever done for your business! It’s just like preparing an estimate on a project. When you bid a job you:
- Get intentional in figuring out what it’s going to take to complete the work
- You determine what it’s going to costs
- You build in mark-ups to generate a profit
- You figure out how to do the work within a budget
- Then you track your results agains the budget to help you stay on track
It’s just like that when builidng an operating budget for your company, and then tracking your results to make sure it happens.
When you use that same approach to budgeting for your whole business, you can create much more profit for your business, and have cash in the bank when you need it. And just like projects, you have more clarity about that it’s going to take to have it turn out.
Being intentional about planning for profits using an operating budget will give you…
- Money to invest back in your business, which will stimulate growth.
- The ability to offer profit sharing with your employees or offer generous bonuses.
- Cash to pay off debt.
- Cash on hand to accommodate unexpected events or slow receivable payments.
- More money to pay out distributions to YOU
Thinking beyond just revenue, and setting goals for gross profit margin, net profit, and cash reserves, and YOUR paycheck, you begin building a plan for profits that gives you the roadmap for getting from where you are now to where you want to be.
This post and the accompanying video will go in depth on how to set goals for your company and then how to set an operating budget to support those goals. I’m going to walk you through a goal worksheet that’s a great starting point, and then dig into how to develop an operating budget for your business.
Planning for Profits – Be Intentional About Your Money
It was a huge wakeup call for me when one day I was faced with needing to buy a new set of tires I desperately needed for my car, and no money in the bank or available credit to buy them. The realization set in that my habit of living from paycheck to paycheck was not workable.
The story of, “When I make more money, I’ll have more money,” was a lie. Because every time I got raises and my salary went up, I still never seemed to have any extra money for unexpected expenses.
Being in my mid-20’s at the time, and starting to look at not just surviving, but actually wanting to buy a house some day, I knew something had to change.
It was while channel surfing one Saturday morning that i stumbled upon the Suze Orman Show and her voice blared at me “your problem with not having enough money isn’t really about not making enough money, it has to do with the fact that your not being intentional with how you spend your money.” I immediate stopped changing the chanel, and started to pay close attention.
That wake up call, and her books and courses completely transformed my relationship with money and began to show me the principles of how to always make a great profit and have money in the bank when I want and need it.
Pricing for Profits: The Story Your Numbers Tell
My client, Bob, called saying, “I’m a little freaked out, and I need your help.” He continued, “I’ve been working my butt off to get my revenue up, but my bottom line profit is dropping.”
If you’ve ever experienced your revenue increasing, but your bottom line staying flat, or worst yet declining, then you can probably relate to why Bob was freaking out.
Making a consistent profit can be a common problem for many contractors, but it doesn’t have to be your problem.
When things like this happen, I tell clients to start with the data. Numbers always tell a story. So Bob and I sat down together armed the company’s profit and loss reports.
Sure enough, he was right. Revenue was steadily increasing, but the gross profit margin had been falling little by little from 30% a few years ago, to 27%, to 25% this year.
Contractors live and die by gross profit margin, so this decrease was worth a closer look.
If you’re working super hard, but you’re just not seeing the results you want, keep reading . I’ll explain to you why this happens, and then, what you can do to change it. We’re going to talk today about what causes gross profit margins to drop, how to avoid “overhead creep”, and how to price for increased profits.
How to Price for Profit in Your Construction Bids
When my client Joe and I met a while back, he shared with me his recent revelation that has caused him to completely re-think how he bids projects.
It all started while reviewing his financial results (prompted by his concern over a declining bank balance). It didn’t take long for him to see a pattern… his company’s gross profit margin was steadily dropping. Joe knows that construction companies live and die by gross profit margin, which meant he needed to dig deeper. As he did, here are a few things he discovered..
1) Pricing in the estimate for materials was not the price they actually paid. There were two reasons for this:
a. The price paid for materials were not what was in the estimate. It’s easy to let this happen, especially if you do long term projects like Joe’s company, where there’s a lag time in between writing an estimate and placing a purchase order.
b. The quantity of materials purchased was over what was in the estimate. When they were self-performing the work (as opposed to using a subcontractor), the final material take off had far less material than they actually needed as shown in the plans.
2) The estimated hourly cost of labor for different positions was too low. This was only affecting the work that was self-performed. So the work done by subcontractors was profitable, but self-performed jobs were losing money.
In today’s video we’re going to talk about why this type of problem occurs on porjects and in bidding, and what you can do to make sure it never happens to you.
We’ll tackle one of the biggest challenges construction companies face when bidding jobs, and I explain how to always make sure you’re pricing for profit.