The business podcast for contractors

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
  

Brand has never mattered more than it does right now. People, the public, your customers, are busier than ever.

Not only that, but the competition for their eyeballs, their attention, has never been fiercer. Between social media algorithms, shrinking attention spans, and an ever-expanding marketplace it can feel daunting for you, the small business owner, to stand out and be remembered.

There is a reason why 1-800-GOT-JUNK can charge $1,000 to haul a load of junk when no one else can. It’s the same reason why you’ll happily spend $90 for a t-shirt at Lululemon, or why people will line up to spend $4,000 on a simple laptop at Apple. People know, like and trust the brand.

Of course, being the next Lululemon may not be your goal, but if you look around within your industry (whether you’re a Landscaper, Painter, Builder, Roofer, or Sub Trade), there are numerous brands that carry mass influence. And if they’ve created it, you can too.

If you’re serious about creating a lasting business, you must. It’s important to look at your brand as a foundation that you build your organization on top of. It’s an investment worth adding to, as a great brand will pay back in dividends over the course of your career.

To explain the importance of branding, and the process of creating great brands in the contracting industry, we’re joined today by the best that we know of – Noel Fox from FreeBird agency.

Having worked with Noel for years, both on creating the Breakthrough Academy brand, as well as your favorite podcast, Contractor Evolution, I can promise you that he is the real deal.

Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK will also tell you that Noel is his #1 go to when it comes to bringing an impactful brand to life. Noel Fox and FreeBird agency have created industry-leading brands for companies such as You Move Me, Wow 1 Day Painting, Shack Shine and have been a massive part of the brand development of 1-800-GOT-JUNK as well as those famous lululemon bags you see on every street across the world.

A few key pieces from this episode on brand include:

• What separates a great brand from an average brand?
• The thing contractors often get wrong with their own brand.
• How to leverage your brand for recruiting and hiring
• How to evaluate your brand the way a world class branding agency would
• The signs you’ll see when you have a brand that’s working for you
• A step-by-step walkthrough on how to build a powerful brand on a budget
• To watch the full episode and access free resources go to www.contractorevolution.com
  

As your contracting business grows you’re going to encounter an interesting and complex scenario (and you may have already) that you are recruiting for, and hiring, a role that you know very little about.

Here’s a classic example – you’ve expanded to the point where you’re hiring for a dedicated full-time office manager. Someone who oversees all the complex administrative elements of your multimillion-dollar contracting business.

You get (generally speaking) how you want things to look when it comes to business organization, but my question is do you fully understand the intricacies of managing a CRM, or a project management software?

Have you ever managed five different inboxes while handling all the calls that are coming in? Have you ever developed all these office processes that make sure that no details get missed.

Whether you’ve gone through this process or are about to, you can definitely see how hard it would be to successfully hire and onboard for this.

Maybe that’s why most contractors’ first office manager is literally running out the door in the first six months.

There are going to be dozens of roles like the example above as you expand. Whether it be a marketing manager or an executive assistant, the point is that you are going to run into this situation many times in your career and it’s going to require you to educate yourself on these roles that you may not understand, but you desperately need.

In this week’s episode we brought back Dr. Ken Keis to share his insights and thoughts on this topic. Dr. Keis has been on episodes in the past and is a foremost expert on Personality Styles and how they relate to leadership.

In this episode Dr. Ken Keis shares:

• The exact 5 step method that seasoned employers use to successfully hire for roles they don’t understand.
• The right way to research what responsibilities the new role will have (it’s not google).
• Why it’s a bad idea to copy and paste a job description from another company.
• A process that allows you to select for the right skills AND the right personality.
• The big mistake that almost every employer makes when they first hire for a role they don’t understand.
• What you need in place before a new hire starts that fosters loyalty and eliminates frustration.