The business podcast for contractors

This conversation is a big one. If you’ve been following along and listening to our episodes each week you know we’re deeply committed to empower you, the evolving contractor, to build the business you dream of.

We’ve talked about tactics and systems, habits and best practices, but we feel like there is this elephant in the room – which is none of this matters if you feel like your labour pool is evaporating before your eyes.

And no, you’re not crazy, or alone. Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t as gritty as Gen Xers or Boomers. COVID has simultaneously increased demand for your services while shrinking the workforce you have to deliver them. If you’re feeling the pinch in your hiring efforts right now, pay attention.

On this episode of the show we are joined by three amazing Breakthrough Academy coaches – Danny Kerr, Thomas Cobleigh, and Ryan Gabel. FYI Breakthrough Academy Is the parent company to this Contractor Evolution Podcast and its where Igor and I work the rest of the time. Breakthrough Academy is a coaching and development program purpose built for fast growing trades and construction companies.

Because we actively coach over 400 companies right now, and have coached hundreds more over the years, we have a very broad and powerful perspective on these bigger trends in the industry.

We thought it would be fun to get some of our brightest minds together to discuss this labour shortage, where it came from, and what to do about it.

In this episode we cover:

• The major trends we are seeing right now in the contractor labour market
• A simple solution you can implement today if you can’t afford top talent
• How to attract top talent and what it means to be an ‘employer brand’
• The culture that attracts great people, how to build it, and how to measure it.
• The 7 Fundamentals you can leverage to become a top employer brand
• The characteristics of a present leader that a team chooses to follow
  

So if you listen to this show with any regularity, it’s pretty safe to say the organism that is your business is evolving. And while that’s an exciting feeling, it also brings about a feeling of uncertainty you’re probably familiar with…. Are my people doing what I hired them to do? Are they an ROI-generating asset for my business? Or are they just an expense? Are they executing at the level that I was back when I was doing their job (and a million others)? Or are they a costly piece of dead weight?

I realize that might sound a little cynical. Or like we’re assuming the worst. But I’m sure most of you have had this thought cross your mind at least once or twice.

When your business was small and simple. This question was pretty easy to answer. If you hired a laborer to work alongside you, you could see with your own two eyes that they’re completely effing the D. There’s the door. Bye!

But as your company evolves, roles become more complex and nuanced, layers get added to the organizational chart, truly knowing how people are performing becomes less clear.

So the question becomes…. How do we, as leaders, manage at scale? How do we make sure our individual team members are executing on their individual goals, so that we as a company hit ours?

To answer this question we brought Dave Stephens on the show. Dave’s company, Lida Homes is an 8 figure custom home builder and high end renovation contractor. He runs a tight ship of 24, and specifically in this show we’re going to learn how he uses one on one Goal Setting and Review meetings (or GSR for short) to lead his 5 project managers to create award winning homes and customer experience.

Over the last 3 years, he’s won the Canadian Home Builders Association builder of the year award, and over the last two has received the highest level customer satisfaction award in his Vancouver Island region. Dave directly attributes this success and recognition to the way he leads his team through GSR.

His people do their jobs. Extremely well.

In today’s Episode:

• What a GSR is and why it is important to both quality and growth in your business
• How to use a point system in your GSRs to create black and white accountability
• What a contracting business looks like before implementing GSRs vs after implementing GSRs
• How you can expect your team (especially your PM’s) to respond when you introduce GSRs
• What a great GSR with a project manager specifically looks like
• How to have a hard conversation with an employee who is underperforming
  

If you’ve ever wasted money on marketing this episode of Contractor Evolution is for you.

The fact of the matter is that there are a ton of marketing agencies out there that are more than happy to take your money even when they aren’t sure they can get you results.

Want to know how to filter out the great marketers from the shitty ones?

This episode will give you the 6 key questions to ask, as well as what you need to do BEFORE you talk to a marketing agency so you see great ROI when you get the ball rolling.

Episode Highlights:

• What questions should you ask to filter out good marketing agencies from those that are good at BS?
• What are the best marketing strategies for contractors that are working right now?
• What are 2 core elements a great marketing agency can clearly show you a poor agency can’t
• Which marketing strategies are a clear waste of time for contractors?
• How to know when you are ready to hire an outside agency
• 1 increasing marketing trend that contractors need to pay attention to in the next 5 years

One of our mantras here at Contractor Evolution – LEADERS ARE READERS!!!

Lemme unpack that….

As a great leader, you know you don’t know everything. More importantly, you’re totally okay with that, and you’re actively working to shrink those knowledge gaps and timeframes by tapping into the wisdom and experience of people smarter than you.

Whatever challenge you’re facing right now, someone’s already solved it and captured their learnings for you in a book you can read or listen to. Thinking that you should have all the answers already is insane.

So today’s episode is Contractor Evolution’s “Must Read” List

I know you don’t have an abundance of time to sit in a lounge chair, sip chamomile tea and leisurely work through a list of books. But the fact that your listening to this podcast means you don’t use your busy life as an excuse to not be constantly improving. So if you can find a spare minute or two, here is what we recommend you dive into.

Now to keep things organized, we’ve structured this list in a particular way

After working with thousands of Contractors, we’ve observed a pretty clear pattern…

There are 6 key areas in a contracting business that are often under-systemized. Think of these as 6 areas that are super important but very difficult to master.

• Budgeting & Financial Tracking
• Organizational Structure
• Recruiting and Hiring
• Training & Onboarding
• Sales & Marketing
• Goal Setting & Execution

To help you along your own pursuit of excellence we’ve collected our favorite books in these areas.

Some key highlights from this short episode are:

• 1 (not boring) book on budgeting that has you taking out profit before expenses
• A book that shows you how to structure your team when everything seems chaotic
• Which book to pick up when you want to hire the right people to replace you
• Where you can find information about a top tier interviewing system
• 2 Marketing and sales books that give you gamechangers to implement into your customer journey
  

Episode #25 of Contractor Evolution is with Kim Larson of All Elements Design. Manage. Build.

Kim is truly one of our highest performing contractors in the Breakthrough Academy Program. She’s an awarding-winning luxury high-performance home builder in Kelowna, BC, Canada.

Some people have grit, some have talent. Kim is one of those rare individuals who has both and she has a story that needs to be heard.

While she enjoys success today (she’s won many awards including Best Design-Build Firm in BC, her waitlist is booked out a couple of years in advance, and she owns a massive portfolio of income-generating real estate), it wasn’t that long ago that she had to decide between feeding herself or putting gas in her car.

And that’s what I think I love most about her story of perseverance… how close she came to not being the success she is today. And I think that’s the case for a lot of people at the top of their game. Big risk equals big reward

In Today’s Episode Kim tells us:

• Why it pays to work for free in the right circumstances
• The big picture benefits of never compromising on quality
• The core principles that took Kim from 1 to 10 million a year in annual revenue
• Whether you should you hire for a role before you can afford it?
• How do you maintain quality as you scale?
• 2 key pieces of advice for young trades entrepreneurs

You’ve heard the expression “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”?

Sorry for the graphic intro, but the point is there is always more than one way to get a job done.

The same holds true for scaling your business. While the growth path for most trades and construction companies follows a similar pattern, there are some entrepreneurs who truly see scaling as one problem with many possible solutions.

Eric Barstow of Foothills Painting and National Painting Group is one of these entrepreneurs. Some of you may know him from his huge online painting community called Painting Business Pro, or his massive YouTube following. Eric has followed the path less traveled by using an innovative partnership model that takes the intense pressure to grow – most of us are familiar with – and share this load with capable partners.

I’ll let him break down his actual model, but for you the listener, what we really hope you take away from this episode is that while Eric’s model is A-Typical, it WORKS. This guy has done it a different way, so what could a different way look like for you?

I hope his story helps put the expansion of your business in a new light. What got you here, won’t necessarily get you where you want to go. It rarely does. And being exposed to a completely different approach to business growth could help you creatively problem solve your next few moves in the pursuit of excellence.

Eric has accomplished a tremendous amount as a young guy – his business is doing a very profitable 11 million dollars a year in revenue, and headed for massive growth in the coming years. However, his path to get here has been full of huge challenges and massive setbacks, which he openly shares with us in today’s episode.

One of the things I really appreciate about Eric is his ability to absorb failures and learn from them in a powerful way. In today’s show, we dive into many of the significant challenges he’s run into, and his greatest lessons coming out of them.

So let’s dive into both Eric’s unique expansion model and some of the lessons he shares with us including:

• How pursuing multiple opportunities stunted Eric’s growth
• Why Eric doesn’t like the traditional Franchise model to scale
• The unique model Eric has created that has allowed him to scale to 11 million and maintain balance
• Why pursuing fast growth ironically led to a 2 year setback
• How to spot opportunity and why you want to avoid the flashy ones
• The reason setting goals around personal income can lead to failure