If I Could Start Over – Mistakes I’d Avoid Building a Contracting Company

Clark: 0:01

Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.

Jared: 0:13

Welcome back to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner, I’m Jared Flo. Thank you for joining us again. So this week we are talking about when you should bring on consultants and help and growth in your company and when you should do it on your own and just use the resources around you for free. You know we all the time get the question. You know I don’t think I’m ready. When should I bring you guys in? I’d love to help to get to the next level. I don’t have the money.

Clark: 0:38

Well, to be perfectly honest, there’s a lot of times that we get phone calls from people that they hear some content from us they enjoy it, whatever and they call us and they’re interesting and inquiring and coaching and we’ll actually talk them out of it and be like you know what. It’s not the right time for you. Yeah, this isn’t the best time for you to jump in. You need to get to this level before it makes sense for you.

Jared: 0:56

And, with that being said, we don’t make enough money on the consulting and coaching for it not to work for somebody, for them to fail out and not be able to continue with us. So we put a lot of time and energy into them to where it’s a long-term relationship. So if it’s not good for the company that we’re working with and we don’t see the value that we can add there, we say no. And that’s the truth of it. Where we don’t want to hurt someone financially trying to make it work to bring us in to help grow their company. If it’s not going to make them a better company, Right, it’s going to hurt them financially to where they’re unstable. And so today we’re talking about that. We’re laying out exactly what coaching and consulting is. And then we’re also going to talk about every level of a company, whether you’re starting the company or you’ve been doing it and you’re doing 10 million a year. When you should say yes to a consultant hey, I need help getting to the next level. And when you should say, you know what I’m going to coast right now, I don’t need help. Thank you guys. There is a time to say yes and a time to say no. We’re going to kind of separate those out.

Clark: 1:58

Yeah, a big piece of that is making the financial, monetary commitment to coaching consulting. It should be mildly painful, it should gosh. There’s a lot of money to spend and whatever it should be, and it’s going to be that. But if making that spend is going to be detrimental to the success of your business, it doesn’t matter how good a coach you’ve got. So there’s a financial aspect of this. Do the numbers make sense? But then there’s also a timing piece of it as well.

Jared: 2:32

If you’re talking with someone to be a consultant, that’s not asked totally great, get this information, learn it. But if they’re just trying to sell you, to get your money and separate you from your cash, that’s a short term vision. Yeah, a lot of these coaches that we’ve seen have where you need the long term vision because, yeah, getting two months worth of coaching that I get paid for and then you fail out, that’s a waste of my time. I need you to be successful for 24 months and then something and launch from that point. If we can’t get you there, I don’t want to waste our time on that. So that’s kind of what we’re laying out today is when you should say yes, when you should talk to us, and when you should say you know what? I’m going to talk to you guys next month, next year, six months from now. For us, we want it to be the best timing for you and your company, but we also don’t want you to make some bad decisions, setting up a foundation to where bringing us in is really solving problems that you spent 50, 60, $80,000 on correcting because you didn’t bring us in early enough, right? So that’s what we’re laying out today, and even if you’re not interested in consulting and coaching, we’re going to kind of lay out what you should be doing without a coach in these moments. If you’re not going that way, this is how you should be doing it. So, even if you’re not interested, it’s a great podcast to listen to in terms of that.

Clark: 3:42

Absolutely.

Jared: 3:44

Getting started. We’re going to diagram and lay out the two packages of coaching that we have, just because we’re going to talk about that throughout this episode and so really kind of narrowing it down. We can customize each package around what people need, but our two standard packages is we’ve got our coaching partnership and then we have our executive partnership. So the coaching partnership is we give you our processes, procedures, our paperwork. We do a four week onboarding training where you learn all of that stuff and we get to know you understand your systems and really start putting together your project management processes with you, show you ours and kind of combining and marrying how you run things as well as how we have realized, through learning the hard way, the best way to run a project and that sort of thing.

Clark: 4:29

So really, one big piece about that level is it’s giving you a jumpstart or a head start in some of the things that you’re going to have to do. You’re going to have to create, you’re going to have to develop. We’ve already got them. We’ve got the paperwork, we’ve got systems and processes Not to me not meaning that you’re going to come in and kind of be a limbing and this is how you have to operate. It is. Here is how we recommend setting things up. Now let’s look at your business, how you function, how you work, what makes the most sense for you, and then it becomes you make it your own.

Jared: 5:03

This isn’t a syllabus where you go through a course and it’s just a one size fits all For us. And that’s the purpose of individual coaching is that we learn your company and say, okay, we do it this way, we suggest it this way, but for your specific situation I would change it this way. How would that work for you? And what if we did it this way? And then a lot of times what we hear is guys say well, I like how I pay my subs in distraction, right. And we say okay, that’s great, Do it that way right now, but that’s not duplicatable. You can’t hire four project managers over the next two years and be able to continue paying your subs that way, or whatever the example is, and so we’ll give you the pros and cons of adjusting and changing the processes that we lay out, and, at the end of the day, it’s your company and we’re here to support you.

Clark: 5:46

Yeah, I tell I mean every one of the companies that I coach and the individuals that I coach. I tell them it is not my job to tell you what to do. I’m going to help guide you in your thoughts and processes and whatever you are thinking about doing. I’m going to give you my thoughts, perspective based on my experience of if you go that direction. I think this could be the outcome. If you want to go that way, that’s fine. Let’s set up these things right, but it’s not a dictatorship. It is what is best for you and your company. You know your company way better than I’m ever going to be able to know it, but I’m going to be able to apply some experience to the decisions you’re making and help you make a more educated decision. That’s essentially what it boils down to.

Jared: 6:27

And our coaching level is we give you the infrastructure, we give you the blueprint and we help you build your blueprint and we’re coaching you going down that path. So it’s a once a month coaching meeting. It’s a one on one coaching. It’s not a group coaching like a lot of people do. It is one on one coaching with us and then to really be walking down the path month over month. So the first four weeks is really setting it all up, laying out what the next 12 months should look like. And then we have the winter retreat that you come on every January and we look at okay, what happened in the last year, what’s going on next year? And so we’re constantly building, adjusting, changing your blueprint of the company and the coaching is here’s the blueprint, here’s the information, here’s the paperwork. Go do it.

Clark: 7:13

And so we call it the coaching partnership or the growth partnership, and the reason for that is on that level we spend the first four weeks of creating some baseline fundamentals and blueprinting where you want to go and making decisions of based on where you want to go. Here are the executables that you need to be working on now, and then your coach once a month is there for direction and accountability Every month. Hey, here’s what we said we’re going to do. How did that go? Do you have any questions about that? Did you get it done? Yeah, I got most of it done, but I didn’t get this thing done. Okay, great, then let’s move that to this next month, but it becomes somebody who is helping you stay on track with the growth that you said that you wanted to have, yeah, accountability.

Jared: 7:59

And it’s also eating the elephant one bite at a time. That’s right you get. There’s so many things that have to be done to grow your company. We oftentimes see guys working towards okay, I’m going to put this paperwork together for my next hire. You’re 10 months away from even being able to afford a hire. Let’s look at your financials and the jobs that you have on the books. You can’t hire right now. Why are you wasting your time on that when you don’t have X, Y and Z set up for your company yet? Right, and so it’s the accountability, but also the one bite at a time. Here’s the three things you got to do this month to be successful. If you do those, when we meet next month, here are the next three things you got to do.

Clark: 8:31

Yeah Well, and one of the things that I would say is the most difficult part of the growth in a general contracting or construction company. We’ve said this a thousand times on our podcast this business will eat up every second that you’ve got right, and if you don’t learn how to take control of your time, you will never have time to work on your business, and working on your business is the only way that you grow. So the benefit of having this coaching or growth level is that you have a person that you know you had a discussion with what you’re going to execute and you’re going to want to show up to the next meeting with those things done. So it’s going to help force you to take that time to be working on those things, which are the things that are going to help you grow your company. So it kind of it naturally helps you with your time management. Unless you’re a person who’s like I don’t care what this other guy thinks and I’ll do whatever I want, then you probably shouldn’t be on coaching in the first place.

Jared: 9:26

Yeah, exactly Right.

Clark: 9:28

But having that person of accountability that you know you’re going to have to sit down and talk and be like, yeah, I didn’t get my crap done right. Once you kind of stay motivated on a weekly basis, you can’t just keep executing these things.

Jared: 9:40

It doesn’t allow you to kick the can down the road and keep putting yourself on the back burner. Six months later, you look up and you’re in the exact same spot you are today.

Clark: 9:47

Now there have been plenty of guys that I’ve coached that month over month over month, they show up and like, ah, dude, I didn’t get it done and I’m not hammering them right, I’m not calling them bad names, but I’m there to be like all right, dude, you said you wanted to get here. You’re not going to get there. If you want to stay where you are, that’s fine, but you’ve got to get these things done if you want to move to the next level.

Jared: 10:07

What’s the reason that this isn’t going to end? So, instead of doing task A next month, what we’re going to do is break down and figure out why you can’t do task A, because it’s been three months now and it’s still not done right. And so let’s break that down, look at that and work on self-control, respecting time. You’re trying to do this every Monday morning, but fires are popping up over the weekend. Why don’t we switch it to a Wednesday morning?

Clark: 10:29

I’ve done that. I’ve done that a lot. Where it’s the person who’s showing up and not getting things done, I don’t default to like, well, they’re just a slack ass and they’re not getting, they don’t care or whatever. It’s most of the time there’s a reason why. They had all the gumption in the world to get it done, but it just wasn’t executable the way that we set it up. So let’s organize it in a way that you can consume it.

Jared: 10:52

So that’s our growth path. It’s the growth partnership that we offer, where it’s the once a month coaching. It’s really just here’s our stuff. Do it yourself. We’re going to help guide you through it. It’s a guided tour of growth and that’s our growth partnership. The other partnership is the higher paid one, but it is our executive level and the executive partnership is it’s a six week onboarding and it starts with you coming to our headquarters in Atlanta or we can come out to your facility wherever you are. We haven’t done too many of those where we go out, unless you’ve got a full staff where we need to interview the staff understand right. When you’ve got four, five, six, seven people on staff and we need to understand the personalities and what’s going on we’ll come to you. It’s just different levels of packages of and cost that makes sense. So a lot of times you’ll come to Atlanta, sit with Jared and I and we’ll prep for about a week for that meeting and on that we sit down, learn and understand your company. And it’s a six week onboarding because we are running the company like we’re executives in your company. We’re on your board of directors in a sense, in the way that we view the company and how we give advice. So the executive level is getting our executive team me, jared or our coaches that are going to be helping you and intimately understanding your company and from there Essentially, we’re involved weekly, if not weekly, at least bi-weekly.

Clark: 12:17

We’re involved with what’s going on. We know what’s happening, we know decisions that are being made, but also you, as the owner of the company, have the opportunity at any given moment be like hey, what do you think about this? You know I’m struggling with this. I’ve got this homeowner who said this how would you deal with that? So you have somebody on your team to process with on any given moment. But then it goes down to strategic business decisions hires, interviews with new potential employees, is it time to fire somebody? I mean, all of that type of stuff will walk with you on an individual basis.

Jared: 12:49

We’ll do interviews. If you narrow down the two final hires and you want to second opinion on which one you should go with, really, we are on. You’re bringing us in on your executive team and it’s really really affordable of a price of where it’s at. So that’s more of the consulting plus coaching, where we’re consultants in your company and helping you form and build and really getting our hands dirty on that, and you get two people from our team on that, as opposed to just one coach that’s guiding you through, yeah, and obviously you’ve still got the you know growth path, you know guidance, and we’re working towards that growth.

Clark: 13:23

It’s just more in depth and involved.

Jared: 13:25

Yeah, it’s a lot bigger of a safety net in terms of you have our brains wrapped around, why, or why not, you’re making those decisions as opposed to all right. Next, you got to work on this. Go work on it and launch what you’re doing with that.

Clark: 13:38

So that’s what our coaching and consulting levels look like consist of what makes it the right choice. When is the right time to say you know what. It’s time for me to do that.

Jared: 13:49

Yeah. So let’s walk through stages of a company to say, when you say yes, when you say no, yeah. So starting off is a startup company, right? I’m starting my company and we’re launching next month I’ve applied for a tax ID number.

Clark: 14:03

I’ve got a company name. I’m not really taking on work yet, but I’m going.

Jared: 14:07

Maybe I’ve been flipping homes and I’m looking to start doing the GC stuff on top of it and I’ve got a really good pipeline of houses that I’m flipping myself so I can at least start that. Whatever it is, I’m ready to start the GC company or a renovation company or a new build company or whatever construction related company that you’re looking at doing. We say do not hire us, do not bring in a consultant, do not bring in a coach at that spot. If you are going to be out in the field doing the work for the foreseeable future, right. If I am starting a framing company and I’m going to be doing all the framing, bring a guy with me helping me out. But I’m starting my own LLC and I’m going to be a subcontractor for these other GCs and I’m just going to run it for a while and get some traction and get some jobs and get do not hire a consultant at that stage Right. That is a waste of your money because your time is going to be spent executing and exchanging your time for money so you can start building up some cash, some clientele and a name for yourself. You can hire us if you want, but what you’re wasting your money on is we’re not putting processes and procedures in place to grow to the next level. We’re solidifying the level we’re at right now, which is a hammer swinger, which is a labor for yourself, where you’re out in the field doing the work.

Clark: 15:26

Which, like I said earlier, the only way for the growth to work is you to have time to work on your company, and if 99% of your time is out in the field swinging hammers on a job site, it becomes very, very, very difficult. One thing that I would say about this level is, as you’re starting up a company, in our growth path, we have something called the base level. Right, there’s four or five stages to the growth path checklist, but it starts with the base level. So, if you are a startup company and you have a little bit of saved up cash from you know what? I saved up some money because I know I wanted to start this company, and so I’ve got a little bit of reserved money. It’s not a horrible idea, right. It could be beneficial because our base level we go through. Here’s everything that you need to start a company. Make sure that you have these things set up, and I mean, obviously, the basics of you need a tax ID number, you need articles of incorporation, you need insurance and all that stuff, bank accounts, credit cards but we’re wrapping that around where we’re going next, right. So if you have a little bit of cash that you could afford to burn it for a little while to get some help and guidance on those things, that’s available. But again, like you said, if you don’t have extra cash and your plan is right now for at least the foreseeable future, you’re going to be exchanging your time for money out in the field. It’s not a great time to hire a consultant because you’re not going to have enough time to implement what you’re receiving to get a return on that money you’re spending.

Jared: 17:00

Now, if you’re launching a company and you’re not planning on being out in the truck and a truck the guy going and executing the work, you’re planning on launching a general contracting company where you are going to be project managing, systematically landing clients, using labor to get the work done. I’m not the labor, but I’m a project manager. Here you need to bring us in, ideally, if you can get a runway of 8, 10, 12 months that you don’t need to take a paycheck if you’ve got that money, if you’ve got a loan, sba, whatever you’re doing to where you can not be dependent on the money coming in but also be able to bring consultants to lay that base foundation in. It is a great move to have that foundation laid. Again, it’s very inexpensive on the coaching level or the growth partnership that we have, it’s very inexpensive to start there. If you want to, really if you see yourself doing over a million in the first year as a renovation company, you probably need to be on our consulting level or executive plus level, because there is a lot of moving parts in that first couple of years in terms of getting a launch. So how you’re starting up and looking at the company and what it’s going to look like is super important as to should I hire and which level should I be at. And that’s where we start with conversations with people interested in coaching of tell us what your goals are, tell us where you’re headed, because we might not be the fit for you. That’s right. And so that’s when you’re starting a company. That’s where it’s at. Next, if you’ve already started a company, you’re six months in or you’re out in the field and working and you’re moving and trying to get into the project manager. You’re trying to move out of the truck where you’re swinging the hammer and into managing your company and growing your company. That’s kind of the next level after startup. This is a spot that you definitely need help if you’ve never done it before. And here’s the thing we’re not gurus, we’re not geniuses, we don’t know more than you and we’re not higher IQ than most of the people that we coach right. What we have is doing it the wrong way and doing it the right way and understanding why we chose the direction we did when setting something up. We’ve done a lot of things wrong. We’ve done stuff wrong in the past couple years in our construction company that we’re still learning lessons from, but we have 18, 19 years of running a general contracting company making those decisions. We’ve hired and fired 40 to 50 people as project managers. Throughout that time We’ve made the wrong hires, we’ve made the wrong decisions. We can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad decision making just by going through the program. If I had this we’ve set this up to where if I had this when I started, I would have expedited the first eight to 10 years of learning and skinning my knee to where we get it done in 18 months and I don’t have to learn the hard way. It’s way cheaper to have someone help me know and understand the hard way and the right way to do things versus learning the hard way and burning cash on that. That’s one of the big things. We have a coaching client that when he started with us, he’d been in business for six months and when he came in he started talking to us. He was like, hey, I’m paying myself X and we’re like well, the monthly pay that you’re paying yourself, that’s how much we charge to be on our full executive level. He signed up with us and two years later he just graduated into the alumni class with us.

Clark: 20:30

Yeah, Well, and he, literally, at that point he looked at us and said you know what, based on what you guys have said, what you guys have given me so far, I’m willing to roll the dice of my paycheck of what this is going to do for me. And he’s just now graduated into the executive program. Do our multi-million dollars, do our multi-million dollar program, yeah.

Jared: 20:48

I’m multi-million dollar company with employees and growing it, so again, that’s a big responsibility that we feel in terms of all right, we are going to make this work for him because he is financially committed to us and we did, and he’s killing it right now, just thriving yeah.

Clark: 21:05

Another thing about the level that you were just talking about, which is the transition from in the field all the time to full-time project manager. In our assessment of all of the transitions of growth, this one is the one that is one of the most difficult and it’s the one that people stumble over the most. I can’t tell you how many people have been in the hamster wheel in this spot. They keep trying to go full project management and they fall back into putting on their tool belt over and over, and over and over. And a big reason for that is because there’s a financial change, a financial shift in this spot, right, and so it’s just a really difficult spot and to have, and it’s a fragile spot that you can spend money in the wrong place and really really put yourself in a bad spot. So it’s a really good place to bring in somebody who’s made that transition, who has the experience of going through this, to help walk you through. Do this, then this step, then this step. Now you’re ready to make that move at the least liability, the least cost, because we’ve had these things set up right. So that’s why, in this place, it’s a really great spot to bring in to join on the executive or to the growth, whichever one to a good spot.

Jared: 23:06

Also, when you’re transitioning from being in the field to being a project manager running the labor, the biggest area that you have no clue, that you don’t realize is that your entire process of execution is in your brain. You are the process that makes this so successful. People are buying you, not your company. They want you and your process in your brain and for you it is very simple. This is just how you do it. You tell people when things are happening, you do this, you show up. When you say you’re going to show up, you do it.

Clark: 23:37

It’s all common sense, no brainer, Obviously yeah.

Jared: 23:40

As soon as you start running crews, running subs or labor, however you’re set up, as soon as you get there you realize, oh, other people’s brains don’t run like me. Oh, okay, because if they did they wouldn’t need to work for me, they’d be working on those themselves. So how do we transition from your brain and how you work and run jobs to how I teach other people and run my subcontractors and vendors and labor to execute as good or if not better than I? Do it Right? And so it seems easy. Hey, just ride in the truck, let me show you how to do it. You could be my assistant and you become a babysitter for that first hire. If you’re hiring a project manager or you become a pull the tool belt out because that crew didn’t do how I wanted them to do it. I told them exactly what I wanted done and it didn’t get done. I got to go just fix it and do it myself, right? So there’s really three areas that we teach on where you lose money, a significant amount of money, and this spot going from in the field to project management. It’s the first two. It is I could. You can lose money on how you run your labor. How you charge your labor, how you have Expectations set around the labor, how you have your labor agreements, how you onboard them, how you treat them and train them, how they operate on site.

Clark: 24:56

Yeah, next week.

Jared: 24:57

We’re gonna dive deep into that too of how to do that well, but that is where you lose a ton of money. You either make money or lose money on the people doing the labor on the job. When you stop doing the labor right, the others. Number two is the customer. How do I communicate? How do I help them understand change orders? How do I lay out Expectations of what they should and shouldn’t expect?

Clark: 25:16

communication problems, estimates, things left off of estimates, all of that all of that.

Jared: 25:21

That’s the second spot. That that that you can lose money. The third one is hiring employees, and that’s not where you’re at yet. If you’re going from in the field to project management, yeah, but the first two is a make or break for your company. If I don’t have the processes in place for both of those areas, I’m gonna lose money, guaranteed. Yeah, you will lose more money trying to run those yourself and learning the hard way than just Hiring a consultant to say listen, this is the right way, this is the wrong way, here’s the process, here’s how you do it, here’s how you don’t do it, here’s what worked for us. This looks very attractive to do it this way, but let me show you the pitfalls of that right and give you all of the information to make those decisions, as opposed to just saying I don’t know, I’ll try, I’ll throw some stuff against the wall and see what sticks right, which is what we did, which?

Clark: 26:04

is what we did and lost. We failed more times than we want. Yeah.

Jared: 26:09

I mean, we’ve lost over a million dollars over the years and when it comes to all of these areas that we’ve learned the hard way, yeah, so that’s, that’s the cheat code that we’re giving out is You’re just seeing all of the ways that we do it now because we’ve learned the hard way?

Clark: 26:22

Yeah, well, and in this level, you know when, when you get to the place where you’re no longer putting your tool belt on and you’re, you’re a project manager. Everything that you were talking about, that is your job. At that spot in our, you know, coaching and consulting program, in that spot, your job is to take our information, the way we’ve laid things out, and apply that to how you do things, what makes the most sense for you, how you want to execute, what your jobs look like from top to bottom, from when a lead comes in the door to when you get paid, take all of that information and then record it. What? How do I operate? Yet why do I do it that way? How many phone calls Do I want? How many touchpoints? What do I say to clients? How do I treat crews? All of those things You’re working to kind of document how I do things, and what you’re doing is you have, you’re, you’re creating what will be used in the next stage of when you go to hire employees, because you’ve got to be able to teach people how to create, how to run your process. Yep, and so in this spot, all you’re doing is working to create efficiency in the way that you run and then recording. This is how I want things done. Yep, right.

Jared: 27:30

And then now, once you’ve got that, you can start making that transition to the next level, where you start hiring employees and hiring people because you have something to guide them with well, and the first, the first processes that we’re putting in place, if you’re moving from in the truck to management, is how is the execution on site happening with the customer, with, with my labor? And that’s that’s one thing. The next level is what you’re talking about is how do I train people to run those processes for me? Right, and so the first step, start up. Second step is in the field of project management. The third step is Pete project manager to my first hire, yeah, right, and so that’s the next transition that people lose a lot of money on and do really. I mean, for us it was years, oh yeah, it slowed us down for years on on the wrong hires to where it was every hire, yeah, every one of them.

Clark: 28:26

We were like this is the guy, this is it.

Jared: 28:28

We found it. It was he’s awesome. We went out for beers. He was such a good dude. I loved him to death it was great. He’s gonna be killer. He’s been doing this for 20 years and he’s so much yeah fired three to six months later, cost us hundreds of thousands. Yeah, because and here’s the key, those hires, if done without the proper structure in place, you are betting on that person running that, your jobs, the way that works for them in their brain, uh-huh. And if that works, they wouldn’t be working for you, they wouldn’t be looking for a job. No, they’d be out running their own jobs and having their own company. If they can run jobs successfully their system, they shouldn’t be working for you, right? Your system needs to add into them to where you take all of their strengths and Organize through my system and they can execute my system almost as good as me, if not better.

Clark: 29:17

Yeah, well, and you really need to view it kind of as I’m gonna hire somebody and put them through the Jared school of contracting. Yeah, this is how I operate, this is how I treat clients, this is how I run, this is when I walk jobs. When I walk them, this is what I do. Right, all of those things that you will then become accountability for that person. I we talked about that. It’s written down on your job job description. This is how I expect you to run and what I’m gonna hold you accountable to. But that’s that’s really. When you’re bringing a higher end, you’re not hiring. If you’re hiring to rescue or you’re hiring because this guy’s got so much experience, I’m gonna make so much money off of him immediately, that’s a problem, that’s a red flag. Yeah, because, at bare minimum, he’s going to dilute the brand of you and your company by bringing in the way that he does things and he’s not gonna operate the way that you do if you here’s here’s a good delineation.

Jared: 30:11

Also, if I’m going to hire a project manager for my company and it’s my first hire, are we doing the same job or are they doing a separate job that I’m keeping them accountable to right? So am I hiring Jared to come along with me and be my assistant and help us do these jobs? And we kind of all do the same thing and every information, every job is in both of our heads. Mm-hmm, that is hiring an assistant that you’re babysitting and you’re not going to be able to double the amount of work you’re doing. You’re gonna be able to increase by 10 to 20 percent. That’s what I was gonna say, and the number of hours of your week are gonna increase by 30 to 40 percent, because not only are you managing More work, you’re also now managing this other person and their flaws and what they’re doing wrong, because they’re not doing it Right, and so if you’re hiring them as an assistant without their own job description that I hold them accountable to, then you’re doing it wrong. Yeah, for us, every project manager is a mini GC inside of our company. They are the heroes here that we are supporting and building up to where, if they work for us, they’re gonna make more money on our backs and we will make money off them Together than if they’re out running by themselves. Because our systems are in place that expedite, we give them great support, we do great and everything, all the surrounding stuff. They show up, execute the job, do the project management and kill it as their own mini GC inside of our company. That’s right. Without, without the risk, without the risk.

Clark: 31:28

Yeah, they don’t.

Jared: 31:28

They don’t have. They have a steady paycheck coming in and For us we have a fully functioning system to execute to ensure that they are. They, they’re held accountable, but also aren’t micromanaged. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that that is a spot. If you’re going to your new hire, you need help. You can do that on your own. For sure. You’re gonna learn the hard way. Our system is cheaper than one wrong hire, yep.

Clark: 31:55

Plain and simple.

Jared: 31:55

So I would say if you are running a company looking for your first hire, there is not a time to there is not a good time to say I’ll, I’ll, I’ll get some help later in consulting for us. Let us help you set that up for that hire and sure that everything’s in place so you don’t lose 30, 50, 80 thousand dollars on that first hire, making the wrong decision.

Clark: 32:17

Yeah, the in in this business growing I mean in any business, but specifically the the construction world. The most difficult and the most costly thing that you will do is hire Yep, that’s it. It is very, very hard to find good hires. It’s very, very hard to find people that will have longevity in your company, will treat clients right, do all that stuff. It’s very difficult to find them which, and it takes time to find out if they’re the right one. Yeah, you can’t. You’re not gonna know week one. Yeah, you’re not gonna know week two, right, and so it costs you cash. You got to burn money every time you make a hire, so Stack the deck in your advantage by bringing somebody in who’s done it 50 times over the wrong way well, and if you are hiring the right person, they are not going to be happy as your assistant.

Jared: 33:08

yeah, the right person needs to be able to run on their own, and this is a whole diatribe on the higher and when and how. But if you’re hiring someone who’s happy writing in shotgun next to you and being your assistant, they’re never going to separate out and grow the company you are going to be babysitting them forever and so that’s something that People don’t understand. Like, oh, this guy’s killing, he’s great, he’s helped me say yes to more jobs, great, you’re. Just don’t hire us. Stay there and you to run this and have an assistant and you know, make a hundred thousand a year and you’ll be happy. That’s great. Do that, don’t hire us. But if you’re looking to grow and separate out to where you’re not doubling the amount of work you’re doing personally, hours wise Let us help you get there for that. Yeah, yeah, alright. So the last step is going from that first hire that first employee to multiple employees. Hiring management that’s managing the project managers. Bring in an office manager. Again, hiring is the is the third thing that cost you the most money. It’s the, it’s the managing your subs properly, managing estimates and clients, change orders, all that stuff accurately. And then the hires, and so that first hire, as well as any additional hire, a strategic hiring plan. We have our HR process, from how to find the right hires, how to interview, how to bring them on, what is the first they look like, what is maintenance of that client, of that hire, throughout them working for you, and what’s a what’s a healthy termination yeah, how do you do that well? So we’ve got a whole process on exactly how to do that. To cover your butt To where you’re not getting sued, yeah, but as well as how do we treat people well, how do we treat people right and give them the best opportunity to thrive here and give them the support they need.

Clark: 34:51

Well, and going along with that. I think you’re exactly right. The goal of that entire process is to find employees that will have a long career with with your business, but also setting them up for success, daily, weekly, monthly, right, and so in this, in this level that we were just talking about, and even even back into, like If you have hired your first employee and maybe looking for second or third, at that point bringing on us as a consultant is a great idea, but a lot of times you’ve You’ve made some strategic decisions that at the time you thought were the right thing and will come in and look at it like, if you keep going down that road, this is going to be the effect of that. I think we need to back that out and reorganize the way that you’ve got your employees set up. It’s similar to like you got a really messy room and the only way to clean it is to Make it even more messy, to get it cleaned up. It’s kind of that idea. You know you’ve made some strategic, strategic decisions based on your own logic, your own street smarts and what you thought would be best, but it’s not based on experience, it’s just using logic, right, and so there’s a lot of times when we get to this level, it’s a great idea to bring you know, coaching and consulting in, because you’re still going to grow and develop and you’re going to need Information about leadership and culture and how to grow and keep people and treat people right and all of that stuff. A lot of times when people come in at this point it’s like, okay, time out, let’s back up. And most of the companies that come in at that level Come in our executive level and they take the two days for our two day intensive that we kind of you know we need to know everything. Right, it’s the, it’s the full disclosure meeting. Tell us everything, tell us about your employees, tell us about your family life, house, business, house of finances. Tells everything that how are your employees set up so that we can kind of take all that, assess it and say, okay, here are the immediate changes that need to happen right now. The last one of these that we did was a guy that came in and he had three, four, five W2 laborers and we. He hired a bunch of labor employees and then after the meeting he literally turned around, went back and he moved all of them to 1099. He didn’t let him go right. He just changed them to a 1099 because that model is more successful for him. There’s more control and not as much liability.

Jared: 37:16

And we’ll cover that next week to diving deep of how that model actually works better for you and for them, and, if you hire them, w2, and we’ll talk about that next week. But yeah, that is the importance of what we’re doing is Let us show you the different ways to do it and the pitfalls of each way and let us lay out why we’ve chosen the ways we have and give you feedback on that, and that’s the. The whole goal with what we’re doing is let’s expedite to where you don’t learn on your own. Learn the hard way on your own. You can learn from our mistakes. The part of this too and we’re not going to gate keep anything like for us, the, the growth partnership, is 1250 a month and that’s 15,000 a year. One bad move is going to cost you more than 15,000 a year. One bad move on a job site is going to cost you more than $15,000. So it is 1250 a month for that, where you’re getting everything, in and of itself is a huge deal. If you want to talk with us about the coaching level with our growth partnership or executive partnership or anywhere in between, we would love to have that conversation with you. If you’re not ready for coaching or you’re in one of the spots where, like hey, do not hire us right now. Start with the software. Start with the software. Software ProStruct 360 is an absolute phenomenal piece of software that that has a million, multi-million dollar software that really can run. Start to finish. Anything you need done it is it is built to grow companies from a one man show to where you can manage employees without micromanaging. We teach you that. So the structure of the software is the backbone of our systems. But then we you step up and upgrade to coaching and we will wrap around how to use those systems efficiently for your company and we can save you five, six, eight, 10% on the bottom line if you get more efficient using this stuff.

Clark: 39:04

So well, and if you’re, if you hear this stuff and you’re like, did I really love the idea about that, but I’m not, I’m not sure. I’m not sure I’m at the right space, if it makes sense for me, call us, talk to us. We, I promise you we are going to be honest with you. We’re not trying to just fill our coffers with as many people as we can get Right. We are trying to create strategic partnerships that are going to be successful. We are for, we advocate for the people that we are, we are working with and we’re not, we’re not just trying to money grab. So we we’re going to have a conversation with you and if it doesn’t make sense, we’re going to tell you that and say, look, here’s your best bet right now Join the software that’s going to help you with organization, continue listening to our podcast and when you get to this level, let’s chat. Yeah, you know. So we’re going to be, if you’re interested, on the fence. You’re not sure, call us and talk to us.

Jared: 39:53

We’ll do a 30 minute zoom with you. We’ll do a. We give away. If you’re on any of our paid versions of the software on the complete or unlimited we do a free 30 minute blueprinting session for your company. We love to help with that and that’s a great place to start where it’s free.

Clark: 40:07

If you’re on the software.

Jared: 40:08

It’s free, yeah, so get in with that. You’ll talk with either Jared or myself on that and we’ll sit down and kind of be better off.

Clark: 40:15

talk to me.

Jared: 40:15

Yeah, you probably want to talk to me, but we’ll sit down and do a zoom for 30 minutes with you. We love doing that and if it’s something where it’s like you know what I want to keep going, great. It’s not a sales meeting, it is literally let us get you started. Yeah, and from there, when you’re ready, pull the trigger. Yeah, if you’re not ready, great, we’re not trying to push anyone in it. No, no, hopefully that was helpful to understand when you should reach out, when you shouldn’t reach out. The value of it Verse, when it’s not as valuable yeah, if you have any questions, go to ProStruct360.com, go to contact us there. You can shoot us an email through the contact us button. We would love to talk to you about it. We will read those emails ourselves, so we’d love to hear from you guys. You can also go to the ProStruct360.com and find Alliance. If you go to across the top some of the resources. Go to the Alliance page and learn more about the coaching there. But you can also sign up on our website for the software and start using it today. So go to ProStruct360.com, get started on the software and we’ll help you grow to the next level. That’s right, all right. Thank you so much for joining us this week and we will talk to you later. See you next time.