100th Episode Celebration! How to remove obstacles to your success and level up

It’s the 100th episode of the Contractor Success Forum! Celebrate with Stephen, Wade, and Rob as they reflect on the first 100 episodes of the podcast. Hear from the hosts about the top mistakes that could be holding your company back from success and what you can do now to remove obstacles level up.

Considerations we cover in this episode include:

• Build your company to function without you
• Embrace change
• Get your books in order
• Define your systems and processes
• Plan ahead
• Work on what you do best
• Get your cash flow under control
• Understand your job costs
• Start with the right seed for a successful business

LINKS + RESOURCES

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Watch a video version of this episode on YouTube.

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Rob Williams, Profit Strategist | IronGateESS.com
Wade Carpenter, CPA, CGMA | CarpenterCPAs.com
Stephen Brown, Bonding Expert | McWins.com

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Rob Williams: Welcome to the Contractor Success Forum. Today we are having our 100th episode. Guys, let’s hear a cheer. Yes. Sound effects. Woo. Yeah, I should have done my sound–

[00:00:18] Stephen Brown: Sound effects. Woo. What was that?

[00:00:19] Rob Williams: Yeah. Woo.

[00:00:21] Stephen Brown: Woo. Okay.

[00:00:22] Rob Williams: Woo.

[00:00:23] Stephen Brown: All right.

[00:00:24] Rob Williams: And so we are going to talk about how to take it to the next level and ways to grow our businesses today. Because we are growing to the hundredth episode.

And so we’re excited here. That I can’t believe it’s already a hundred–

[00:00:36] Stephen Brown: Hard to believe.

[00:00:37] Rob Williams: That’s great. Hard to believe so. And who do we have here on it? We have Wade Carpenter, Carpenter and Company, CPAs. And we have Stephen Brown, McDaniel-Whitley Bonding and Insurance Agency. And I’m Rob Williams with IronGate Entrepreneurial Support Systems and Pumpkin Plan for Contractors. 

So, alright, so today guys, what is it? We got? We got this. This is awfully exciting. So how are we gonna kick this off?

[00:01:01] Stephen Brown: Well, you know, we were talking about this being our hundredth episode and how important it was. A hundred episodes is impressive to us. I don’t know about anyone else, but we’re excited about it. And we were talking about what the last a hundred episodes meant, because, Rob, you were saying it’s been how long since we started this thing?

[00:01:23] Rob Williams: It’ll be two years in a couple of months. I guess we do one a week, basically. So we can just say it’s, I guess we’ve done more than one a week. I don’t know. I don’t know how, because I think it’s April when we first–

[00:01:33] Stephen Brown: Yeah, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?

[00:01:35] Rob Williams: I know, I thought it was one year, not two . I was like, but how do we get a hundred of these?

[00:01:39] Stephen Brown: Well, Wade tell us what you were hoping we could accomplish in this hundredth episode.

[00:01:44] Wade Carpenter: Well, I don’t know about you guys. I think you feel the same way. I’ve truly enjoyed doing these things and I truly have enjoyed hearing some of the comments from some of our listeners. One in particular told me that they felt like this was like a MBA for contractors.

And I think it’s just three old guys trying to figure out, let’s put out some good information and hope you get something from this. But you know, we call this Contractor Success Forum, and we were hoping that maybe you gleaned something from this podcast that has helped you in your business.

What we wanted to do today, I think was throw out some of the things that each of us feel like you could maybe do today to improve your success. Maybe there’s something that you just need to do different and, I don’t know if you wanted to comment about that. I did have a little story I wanted to share, but what do you think?

[00:02:35] Stephen Brown: Yeah, no. Tell your story.

[00:02:37] Wade Carpenter:  This is just a simple little story I heard from my buddy James Chapman last week. He’s a business owner in Covington, Georgia. Good friend of mine. And he threw this out last week and it really made me think. But he was telling me he was a 15 year old trying to earn a little extra money on a Saturday, and he was working for his two uncles that were custom home builders, just earning a little bit extra money and they were in this nice custom-built house and he was up on some scaffolding with one of his uncles putting up crown molding.

And so what they would do is they’d get up there and measure it and call out the angles to the other uncle. He would go in the other room, cut the crown molding and bring it to him, and then he put it up. Simple things. So they did this two or three times. And after the one uncle called down the measurements, the other one went in the other room and he all of a sudden started cussing and and he jumped down off the scaffold. And then he went in the doorway. There was this toolbox that was sitting in the doorway all that time, and the other uncle was stepping over it one way or another. So he moved this toolbox out of the way and said he would’ve stepped over that stupid toolbox all day long if I hadn’t gotten down and moved it.

And he used this as an analogy and I really started thinking about it. It’s what is in the way of my success? It may be a stupid little toolbox, but what is getting in our way of success? And so that’s where I was thinking, well, maybe we could talk about some of those things that possibly are getting in the way of our contractors’ success and profitability and growth. Does that work guys?

[00:04:14] Rob Williams: Yeah. That’s great. I love that story because in my days of the manufacturing plant, it was all about trying to find something to speed up and grow and 10 times your productivity and taking that time to organize and get those things out of your way that were holding you back.

[00:04:31] Wade Carpenter: Well, sometimes we don’t even think about those things that are in our way, too. Like that toolbox, he just would’ve stepped over it all day and there are things that we could have probably done and we don’t do. And so that’s what I wanted to kick around a little bit today, if that works.

[00:04:44] Rob Williams: Yeah. Yeah. It’s great. Yeah and people don’t realize that it just has to hit them in the face. It’s so hard to see what, to see the forest for the trees, using an expression, because you just can’t see it when you’re in day-to-day. And when you’re busy putting out fires, you’re too busy to fix your problems.

So somehow you’ve got to back up and figure out how you can grow. Because if you do the same thing over and over, what’d they say? That’s the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome. So that’s what we do. We get into the rut. I’m just like, I can’t believe we’ve been doing this two years. You just don’t realize time flies by and you just don’t make those changes that you need to do to get out of where you are– assuming you want to get out of–

[00:05:29] Wade Carpenter: I mean, sometimes we’ve got blinders on. But Stephen, do you have any ones that you wanna start us off with?

[00:05:35] Stephen Brown: I know my brother-in-law was literally smoking a chainsaw blade. And I said, why don’t you take the time to sharpen that blade? And I. He gave me a look, look that I just shrugged my shoulders and left. And then later on he said um, he goes, so how do you sharpen these blades? 

[00:05:53] Rob Williams: Hey!

[00:05:53] Stephen Brown: So, he didn’t know.

Same thing. He didn’t know. And he’s a really bright fellow. So, that’s a good point. You can’t see the forest for the trees. What’s holding you back from your success? And when I think about our last hundred episodes, I think we had some really great topics. And Rob, you were good at calling every topic great. And being enthusiastic about it before we started. I appreciate that. 

Build your company to function without you

[00:06:20] Stephen Brown: But we had some great topics. And the one thing that just stood out to me, if I had to say, okay, you want me to summarize all hundred episodes of what I got the most out of, that was the whole point of fix up your company as if you’re gonna go on vacation for a month. Then fix up your company as if you’re gonna sell it.

And what’s the logic of that? The logic is it forces you to plan ahead. To see the forest through the trees, to know the details. So when you’re away you’ve got the right systems and processes in place. So, couple of boring things, systems and processes. But unfortunately we’ve had a lot of good stories of how lack of those have caused nightmares. That’s my 2 cents.

[00:07:06] Wade Carpenter: Okay.

[00:07:07] Rob Williams: Oh yeah. I like what you said about an MBA. I’ve learned more on this show, really, most of it’s not new, but it just tied a couple of loose ends together that we have. Because we just go year after year and never exactly understand what we are doing. And then something that Stephen will say, or something that Wade will say is oh, that’s why we did that. Oh my God. For 30 years. I can’t believe I didn’t realize that. 

So it’s these little bitty ties that pull things together have been amazing and I just feel like even though I’m not contracting now, I’ve learned more here than I did contracting I think.

Because after 10 or 20 years. I remember even going to the home builders shows and stuff, you know, after five or 10 of them and you might see one thing new. You kinda quickly walk the aisles after a while, there might be one thing you need to talk to somebody. Then you go look for the party. You know, it’s like, okay, we’re done.

For the first few years, boy, when I was 23, going to those. It’s man, every booth was the coolest thing I had ever seen. And I would stop and look at these new ideas. But we get in that rut and we do the same things over and over again.

Embrace change

[00:08:15] Rob Williams: I said something earlier that I, I’d like to take back: is if you are happy where you are, you don’t need the changes, but you, everything changes. You can’t, if you are not changing and growing, you’re shrinking and dying because the industry’s changing, the competition’s changing, things are getting better and better. It’s not the same as it used to be. So you have to keep changing in order to grow, but you also have to keep changing in order to maintain the success you have if you are successful right now. So. 

[00:08:45] Wade Carpenter: Okay. Yeah, I think that was your first point, right? Embracing change?

[00:08:49] Rob Williams: Yeah, I did say, embrace change all the time. You’ve got to do it. We get so comfortable and a lot of our industry is known for not wanting to make change and doing it the way they are, because if you’ve learned some things, this is the way my dad taught me today. This is the way I learned how to do it. And we don’t know why we do a lot of the things that we do, and it’s hard to change when you don’t know why you’re doing something. That’s actually gets really frustrating. You can’t talk to somebody into change if they don’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Even like coaching, that’s kind of difficult because they just dig their heels in.

[00:09:23] Wade Carpenter: Right.

[00:09:24] Stephen Brown: Our listeners by now probably look at this YouTube video or listen to the podcast and they say, these guys are so smooth and professional. It blows my mind. But you know, believe it or not, we started off, we weren’t as slick. We. We didn’t have the editing. We didn’t know what we were doing. It was the blind leading the blind.

[00:09:43] Wade Carpenter: We still don’t.

[00:09:45] Stephen Brown: But, we enjoyed each other’s company and we learned from each other. And I think one thing that’s so important is all three of us are passionate about our contractors that we work with being the best they can be. And I like that. We’re not a commercial, we of course are doing it hopefully to drive business to ourselves if people wanna do business with us. But we’re giving you the facts you need to know and we’re not holding back. And I’m very proud of that.

[00:10:14] Rob Williams: Yeah.

[00:10:15] Wade Carpenter: Well, if we can, let’s try to go through these. We’re gonna try to do a round robin thing. 

Get your books in order

[00:10:19] Wade Carpenter: And I wanted to throw one out there that I’ve said, and I know it sounds self-serving, but getting your books in order, getting your financial picture in order, I think is one of the biggest things that a contractor can do to get to that next level.

And actually had a prospect I spoke with end of last week that had bought a high-end, I don’t want to use any names, but a high-end construction software. They were almost two years into it, but they were still using QuickBooks Online. They hadn’t made the change and they weren’t moving forward with any of it, and they had a horrible system.

What is it today that you could do if you’ve already sunk the money into a construction accounting system? If you’ve got some money into a controller or a bookkeeper that is not working, if you’re never getting timely, accurate books, that is one of the biggest things you can do to move your business forward and grow and be profitable.

If you would just, look today, do you need to make a change? That’s all I’m asking.

[00:11:21] Stephen Brown: Yeah. That’s all he is asking. That’s all we’re all asking. Why don’t you make that change? Why do you want such a good accounting system? Rob and I can tell you sometimes Wade’s a little humble about what he does, but we’ve talked about this before. You don’t learn construction accounting in school. You just don’t.

It’s a trade, it’s a craft, just like an apprentice to a certain trade. Wade is a professional apprentice. There’s so many moving parts to a good accounting system. And Wade, I have to say, you get what you pay for in a good accountant. You don’t pay much, you don’t expect much, you get bad advice. And that bad advice costs you money. Okay, well there’s my shameless plug of you, but it’s so true. I can’t do my job without you. Rob can’t do his job without you. We’ve got to have some way to measure how you’re performing in order to help you. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

[00:12:14] Wade Carpenter: Yep. 

Define your systems and processes

[00:12:14] Rob Williams: I’ve got one that’ll lead after this one because I said embrace change and then you were talking about your accounting system and that is a process. And the paradox here, the irony is the way to embrace change is to define your systems and processes.

It’s like, okay, well I don’t want systems and processes I can’t change. But you need to work on your processes in order to make changes. Because if you’re not efficient in your processes, you’re gonna be too busy to solve your problems. You get the day-to-day rat race. 

If you can start defining and just start defining three or four of your processes, or just one at a time, and get those main ones done, then that gives you more time, not only time on the clock, but mental time. The time that you don’t have to be thinking about this thing over and over again.

And also the side benefit of that is you can delegate it, but let’s just stick with the process. Get that process in, then you have it defined, then you know what you’re doing, and then you can make changes to that process. So it’s a couple of things. You can’t sometimes make the change until you understand what you’re doing right now.

[00:13:21] Stephen Brown: That’s right. Good point. Wade, we didn’t mean to hijack your five topics, but you know, we’re excited about this stuff. It’s, you’re getting us fired up.

[00:13:30] Rob Williams: We’re round robin! 

[00:13:31] Wade Carpenter: Don’t think we’re gonna hit our five —

[00:13:32] Rob Williams: We’re going and round.

[00:13:34] Wade Carpenter: Stephen, throw out another one of yours, if you’ve got one.

[00:13:37] Stephen Brown: Another one of mine.

[00:13:38] Wade Carpenter: What’s your–

Plan ahead

[00:13:39] Stephen Brown: You know, I’m so big on planning ahead. Last two years, we’ve had covid, we’ve had all this crazy stuff going on. One of my very best friends and customers died unexpectedly of leukemia. Found out about it and took him extremely quickly and we were all in shock.

But one of the things that I’m most proud of beside being his friend, and he was the greatest of great, but he really had his business in order. And we did that together. He did a lot of it himself. And he was always a student of contracting. And being an engineer by training, of course, he was right about everything. So, we, we did mix it up.

But he used the covid and the slowdown of things that were going on, the dysfunction to just push that company. And now that he’s gone, we’re just seeing the fruits of so much great groundwork that he laid that it’s unbelievable. The company’s strong, doing great. Not one team member left, not one single employee or team member left. And to me, that’s what everyone should want to accomplish. 

Yeah, I remember, I may have told y’all this story, but my uncle who was an insurance agent too, he’s the reason I got into the bond business, insurance business. But he planned so well that when he was in critical care for six months when he broke his neck, not one penny did it cost my aunt. Not one penny. He had planned so well, and I think that’s the way to live.

[00:15:21] Wade Carpenter: Yep.

[00:15:22] Rob Williams: Yeah. You know what’s striking me as we’re talking about these, these sound like just old, conservative, stodgy methods that would keep us static–

[00:15:34] Stephen Brown: Well, maybe we need to come up with sexy names for everything. Let’s just rebrand everything that we know, and then we’ll try to remind each other what that sexy name means. Later.

[00:15:43] Rob Williams: But what’s so wild to me is I, I, you think the big entrepreneur guys that are running around and doing all this stuff, those are the ones that are just growing like crazy. And a couple of times I can think of some examples that’s been true. But that’s not the consistent, steady growth that we see over time.

The ones that are really growing, they may even be at like an 80% growth rate or something like that, they’ve got the structures and everything in place. It’s not that wild entrepreneurial aspect. I think when I started off, I remember at one time I had 12 LLCs going. It’s like, what in the world?

Because I just thought you did this. I made an Excel spreadsheet. Here’s the thing. Okay, that one’s going all right, take off. I’ll come back to that later. And this one’s here, this one’s here. You know? And so you just have 12 bad companies, so it– 

[00:16:30] Stephen Brown: All– 

[00:16:31] Rob Williams: Don’t– 

[00:16:31] Stephen Brown: –talk and no walk.

Work on what you do best

[00:16:32] Rob Williams: Yeah. Oh yeah. So getting all that into one. Do a few things really well. Which, oh, and we just went into this, I actually replaced the list I gave you, Wade. My number one, one I came up with after I had sent you that list was work on what you do best. Not what is the worst. Don’t fix your worst problems all the time, which we’ll come back to that. You gotta fix some problems.

But, work on what you do best so you can be the best at something and then do more of what it is that you do best. I know I was like that. I hated for anybody to have a problem with me. I just hated it when a client would have a problem and fix something, just so I’d spend all my time on that instead of growing. 

[00:17:14] Stephen Brown: About Contractor Success Forum: be the best you can be? No, I think somebody else took that.

[00:17:20] Rob Williams: Yeah. Right! Some of those military guys. Something. I don’t know. The– 

[00:17:25] Stephen Brown: Be the best. Push to be the best. You’re right. It differentiates you in so many different ways of how you can make money. There’s so much to having a specialty that you really know and do better than anyone else. And you think it has to be something huge and it can be something small that you do perfectly, that everybody trusts you to do perfectly.

[00:17:47] Wade Carpenter: Yep.

[00:17:47] Rob Williams: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. because the Pumpkin Plan for Contractors, not that I’m plugging it, but I guess I’m plugging it, but it’s about colossal growth. I don’t have a picture of a giant colossal pumpkin on here, but, it is that. It’s not about running all these small businesses that you can’t really grow each one so much cause you don’t have as many systems and processes Get that one that can grow and you’ve got all those processes and it’ll grow while you sleep.

You get all these things in here because you as the contractor can only do a certain amount. If you don’t set that company up to run by itself, as Stephen was talking about earlier, you’re not gonna have that growth. And you’re gonna be a lot— you’re gonna work less. Not more. You’re gonna work more at a smaller growth rate with a less profitable company when you work your ass off all the time.

Is that gonna give us an e?

[00:18:37] Stephen Brown: No it’s def– your definition of chaos. You were talking about it before.

[00:18:42] Rob Williams: Yeah. It’s all about that. It was not my natural thing. I had to learn this because this is not what I thought and tried to do. I think in our business, we accidentally kinda got into that because we took over somebody’s business that was building these small houses, and that just took us, they were the same thing.

We had this 101 plan that was a thousand square feet, three bedroom house. Yes, it is possible to fit three bedrooms in a thousand feet. But that thing sold like crazy. We made more money on that one, not percentage wise, raw dollars, than we made on some of the 2000 square foot houses. And you just built that thing in your sleep. So it was amazing. 

And we got it down. As we were going in there I still remember the $2 of a toilet was like just the biggest issue negotiating because we were buying thousands of toilets. It was just like a huge thing that, that one toilet was $2 more than the other one on a thing.

And getting those systems and processes down to where you can grow, even if it was accidental. Sometimes you fall into what we say lucky but you kinda make your luck by being prepared for those times. 

That’s the other things about systems, I guess this is another one, the Jim Collins said that he did a study. He was that professor at Stanford that studied entrepreneurs and he found that the luckiest people were the ones that had the most cash. So they got lucky, but it is because they were able to seize those opportunities because they had the cash to do it.

Get your cash flow under control

[00:20:11] Wade Carpenter: Right. Well that actually brings me to one of my major points, which we talk about all the time: cash flow. And getting control of the cash flow is huge in growing. And we all know that’s a big problem in construction.

And most everybody is of the opinion that there’s nothing they can do about it. But there’s always several things that you can, I mean, sometimes you’re not getting your bills out on time. I could go into several things that we could do about that.

[00:20:39] Stephen Brown: Well, cash flow’s an engine, Wade. In the last hundred podcasts, we’ve had a lot of them where we’ve taken that engine apart to make it run smoothly.

[00:20:48] Wade Carpenter: Yeah.

[00:20:48] Stephen Brown: Okay, I just trademarked that. I just thought of that. So you can run with that. Wade, it’s yours.

[00:20:53] Wade Carpenter: Well, the one other thing that we talk about a lot along the lines of cash flow is the Profit First system. And a lot of people read the book and maybe they go open up an account, but they don’t really embrace the system. Or they get this analysis paralysis, worrying about percentages.

Reach out to somebody today and get going.

[00:21:14] Stephen Brown: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:15] Wade Carpenter: Go open that account today or just put 1% aside.

[00:21:19] Stephen Brown: That’s how you eat an elephant. One bite at a time. 

[00:21:22] Rob Williams: Yeah. You do parts of it, and I’ve really come to realize, Wade, as you probably have too, a lot of the contractors, they’ve got a long cash flow cycle. And sometimes if you just do the pure simple Profit First, it won’t work. We do have some people that, when I say long cash flow cycle, it takes them a long time to get their money in, but they pay their money fast. So they’ve got to finance these jobs out of their pocket. And then sometimes you don’t receive that money till later. So you’ve gotta have a little bit more of an advanced Profit First system. 

So a lot of our commercial contractors out here, they really do need to get some help. Where some of the simpler residential contractors, the simple system works because they receive their money upfront and that kind of stuff. So the just basic accounts work.

Getting into that, to grow and what we’re seeing, our audience, it’s a major cash flow thing, which we didn’t mention that. I just ran into somebody a week ago talking to him. He’s got a 200% growth rate, and he has a slow cash flow cycle. It’s like, how are you gonna finance that? And do you know how much that’s gonna cost you? Is the bank gonna lend you that? So you’ve got to get that cash and you’ve gotta get that cash flow story projection in there as well. So it depends on what industry you’re in. Some of the Profit First purists will say, well, you need to get your business where you have your receivables fast. It’s like, well, some people are just not in that industry. We’ve got to–

[00:22:43] Wade Carpenter: Right. Well, you have to adapt.

[00:22:44] Stephen Brown: And the three things you need to get bonds: cash, character and capacity. Call it the three legged stool.

[00:22:50] Rob Williams: Right, right. So I guess, Wade, you say a cash plan, I guess, is one of the things.

[00:22:55] Wade Carpenter: Well, I mean, just getting control of your cash and don’t accept that there’s nothing you can do about it. But if you understand the inputs into cash flow and you know what’s coming, you can do something about it. And you can manage your growth and it’s huge. 

And so I guess the one point I would make today is if you’re kinda stuck on that, get some outside help. Get those blinders off, move that toolbox outta your way.

[00:23:22] Rob Williams: Yeah. Yeah. I’d like to quote Jim Collins again. The Good to Great guy. He said that more businesses have suffered from indigestion than starvation. So more businesses have gone out of business because they had too much business rather than not enough business because the cash flow bankrupted them.

And it’s amazing when we talk to people, they just haven’t sat down contractors, they haven’t sat down to understand this. So many times, once don’t you talk to them, they’re like, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense!

[00:23:53] Stephen Brown: All three of us– 

[00:23:53] Rob Williams: It just, 

[00:23:53] Stephen Brown: –that, Rob, over and over and over again. And we sound like your dad preaching at you. You know? And that, that was the point. We don’t wanna sound like your dad. We’re the cool guys, really. But sometimes your dad has good advice just based on past experience and that’s what we wanna pass through to you.

Alright. Wade, what’s another point?

Understand your job costs

[00:24:13] Wade Carpenter: Really understanding your job costs. That’s one of the major things when I talk to a new client, they don’t have good tracking of job costs. They don’t value it. Until they see it, they all say they want it. But if you actually get it in place, if you understand what your overhead is, which is another point, you know, you know what it takes to break even and you know a lot better how to bid your job. So get control of your job costing and overhead and do something today to move that forward. 

[00:24:42] Rob Williams: Stephen, when we had lunch with that underwriter, that’s what he said. We were actually talking about my book with him and he said the number one thing is get your job cost. Which I don’t really address, that’s not something I address in my book.

[00:24:53] Stephen Brown: Yeah, but there’s so much to understand in your job cost. Back in the old days, I had a, a guy, this was back when you could work on all your equipment yourself, and he knew exactly what everything that needed replacing on any of his equipment, he knew exactly what it cost.

And when that amount valued or an invoice came in, he would freak out about it. Well, that’s one way to run your company. But then if you really know what your costs are, then whoever’s paying your invoices is able to tell whether that invoice is correct and pay it. It’s the cost you have.

And it seems so simple and it really can be, but you’ve got to put this in place, these ideas to improve your cash flow in place and make sure you’re constantly working on it. It’s back to the engine. You know, it’s like putting a wheel in your engine. I’m on an engine roll today, guys.

[00:25:49] Rob Williams: Rev that–

[00:25:50] Stephen Brown: Yeah. Soon, by the time, maybe 10 years from now, everybody listening to our podcast and all the vehicles are all electric. And they go, man, what was that old man talking about? 

But, but anyway, to me, the cash flow, it was always a popular topic. We always had a lot of downloads about cash flow, and everybody seemed to care about it. And maybe we were foremost about waving the flag about how important it was. But I’m proud of that.

[00:26:20] Wade Carpenter: I know we’re getting a little long and this has all been good things. You guys brought up stuff I, I absolutely agree with and that wasn’t on my list.

[00:26:27] Rob Williams: Yeah. 

[00:26:28] Wade Carpenter: But you know, I just really appreciate all of our listeners over the couple years.

Start with the right seed for a successful business

[00:26:33] Rob Williams: I’d like to talk about that one point though. You can do all these things, but it’s just like we talk about in the book, if you don’t have the right seed to grow your business– which I’ve done that, sometimes you’ll have an idea that is not going to make it. You know, whatever you’re doing, this is across all industries. But sometimes you’ve just got to get the right seed and your business idea what you’re doing is just not working. You’ve got to find a new seed and plant that again. 

And so when you go into this, you can do all these things and it won’t necessarily work. So we, what we like to say again is, work on what you do best. Find out what you do best, but make sure there’s a demand for it. And then once you figure those out, somebody’s gotta buy it. And then put those systems and processes and do like, these things are in there. 

But you really have to work on that. You’re gonna be able to grow your business so much more easily if you have figured out something that you love, that you can be the best. You don’t have to be the best in the whole world and everything, but in especially construction, it’s nice. You be the best in your area or find your niche of something and when you can say that you’ve got one thing in your business, you don’t have to be best at every single point, but there’s one part of that business that you’re best at, then that gives you the right seed to do all these other things that you’re talking about. 

You can do everything right, but if it’s the wrong seed, it doesn’t, just doesn’t have the genetics to do it. You can’t make everything grow. And I’m passionate about that because I made that mistake. I thought you could just take any business. I really remember thinking, I can take any idea and within three years I’m gonna grow this thing better. And I proved myself wrong, , because some ideas didn’t matter what we do.

They’re just, nobody wants it. It’s not competitive. Something about it is not there. So that’s what I like Profit First in these things. In the very beginning, if you can’t make those numbers work out early, don’t grow that into a $15 million business non profitably only to find out that when you get to be 15 million, when you get to be a bigger sized business, you need to just forget it because you grew this whole thing for years. It’s not a good seed. That’s one of my big premises is start with that right seed, which would be strategic planning is what we– 

[00:28:55] Stephen Brown: That, that’s how Rob and Wade met, listeners. Profit First. It’s a business idea that carries a lot of weight and is just fantastic and it tied together all the principles of all of our podcast, hadn’t it? Wade.

[00:29:09] Wade Carpenter: Yeah, I mean for a lot of things it just, it made things fit and it made my business fit together better and I’ve also seen how it’s made some vast improvements in several of my contractors. When you do it right. 

[00:29:23] Stephen Brown: Okay. From the old guys. Let’s wrap it up.

[00:29:26] Rob Williams: All right, well, we’ll put our party hats away and get on with our hundredth episode. Thank you guys for listening to us. So find us on YouTube. Find us on our podcast, wherever you’re listening.

[00:29:38] Stephen Brown: Don’t look for us on–

[00:29:38] Rob Williams: Web page. Yeah, we’re not TikTok. I think Stephen’s got a big–

[00:29:43] Stephen Brown: Well, it’s that whole balloon thing, but– 

[00:29:45] Rob Williams: Yeah. Yeah. And if you wanna find us, Contractor Success Forum dot com is where you can find out where we are on everything, I think from there. And scripts of these shows, if you ever need every single word that we just said, you can actually get that there too.

So comment, tell us what you want us to talk about for the next hundred episodes and come here and get your construction MBA on the Contractor Success Forum, and we will see you on the next hundred episodes. Thanks.

[00:30:13] Stephen Brown: Don’t look for us on Tinder either.