Unlocking the Secrets to Sustainable Growth for Your Construction Business

In this episode, we meet Randy Stanbury from 4 Level Coach to discuss the top 10 reasons why many builders and remodelers struggle to achieve lasting growth and how identifying and fixing these obstacles can transform your business. From defining a clear vision to mastering your pricing strategies and managing your time efficiently, these insights will give you the foundation to grow with profitability and purpose.

If you’re ready to move past the roadblocks and scale your construction business, addressing these key areas is a game-changing strategy for long-term success. Remember, building a scalable business requires the right systems, knowledge, and action—but once mastered, the rewards are endless.

Watch/Listen/Read as we break down actionable steps to implement business-savvy tactics, improve financial literacy, and build the systems that can help your construction business thrive.

Part I

Part II

Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for home builders & remodelers so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com

Transcripts:

Rick: Today in Conversations That Convert, we’re talking about 10 reasons why builders and remodelers Fail to grow, and we have a very special guest with us. Let’s get started.

Narrator: Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies and home builders Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant, and now.

Here’s Rick and Daiana.

Rick: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Daiana is off today, but I have a very special guest, Randy Stanberry from Four Level Coaches here to talk about his latest book. Randy, welcome to Conversations That Convert. Awesome.

Randy: Thank you. And thank you for having me. Yeah, we’we launched this book a couple of weeks back extremely proud of this thing.

Look, it’s the 10 reasons builders and remodelers fail to grow, right? And our entire program and world revolves around solving these 10 reasons. And this is my belief is that every one of these is the reason that we are stuck. And why we will continue to be stuck until we can solve these. And so it, there’s literally a system and a structure to get through each one of these.

And until we deal with these. We’re always going to be really just struggling to get to that next level. Now, when we talk about, look, a lot of businesses just fail altogether. I believe in this industry, we can generate income. We can generate a living and we can generate enough that we can continue to survive, but we have a really hard time growing.

Now, what is growing to me? Growing is with real profitability. So it’s not just adding more revenue to the top line. We’re talking about adding more revenue to the top line that allows you to be scalable because we’ve got it profitable. And until we dial all that in, we’re going to be stuck for some time.

Rick: Well, we’re going to get into the 10 reasons and go through each one of them here. But before we do that, tell us a little bit of background on you. You know, who are you, where are you? And how did you get to be talking to me here today on conversations that convert?

Randy: So I started a four level coach back in I guess it was like 2019 where, you know, we really started to peel back the onion  on how we’re going to develop this business.

I sold my core business in 2017. That was a business I had removed myself from it, 2007. So I spent 10 years growing and developing other businesses. Once I got that core business to a point where I was able to remove myself and by being able to do that, what I realized is, well, I pulled something off.

That’s kind of special. Most people struggle to get their business to a point where it’s a well oiled machine that you can be removed from the day to day in order to go. You know, either live a passion project take on a, most of us as entrepreneurs, we have the next business in mind. We just never get there.

Rick: Yeah. Right. So

Randy: I was able to pull that off. So I wanted to share that and I share it with our four level coach system and what we created in 2019. You know, our first builder we worked with our very first client in that first year. He was at 5 million, got him to 25 million real growth, real scalability.

Within two years of working with them. And, and again, that just, again, it just proved that what we’re doing works. And now we talk about, we don’t have to be the biggest, but we’re going to be the best about getting results, getting real, real scalability with real profitability, a, I believe every builder remodeler has a winning lottery ticket in their pocket.

We just don’t know how to cash it in. I’m telling you right now, this book and our 10 reasons is the formula is the how to how to cash that in because we all have it. It’s there’s zero reason why we can’t do it. We just got to get the right pieces in the right place.

Rick: I love it. Yeah, I love it. I’m, I’m, let’s jump right into it.

I want to hear what, what, what is the number one reason or one of the 10 reasons why builders and modelers fail to grow?

Randy: Yeah, man. I mean, start with number one. I think number one, without a doubt, is a lack of a clear vision. And so we’re starting, and it might seem like a simplistic way to start because there’s so much more guts that we’re going to get into that are seemingly far more important than this. To me, this is what gets it all started. Look, if, if we don’t have a vision about where we want to go, what the hell are we doing every day when we get up to do what we do, how are we directed? How are we making decisions about what we do? If we don’t actually know where we want to go, you know

Rick: attribute some of that to the lack of a clear vision, sort of to a builder failing to niche down where they’re trying to be everything to everybody.

Randy: Hundred thousand percent. We’re trying to be everything to everybody because we don’t have that clear vision of what we actually want to be. So who do we want to be when we grow up? Who do we want to show up? Like in the marketplace, what do we want to be known for? Right. So if we don’t know where we’re going, how do we know what we want to be known for, and if we don’t know that, I mean, come back to what you do.

How do we help them convert more leads of for who, for what, you know? And so no doubt you, you help them get niched down and figure out who are they and how are we going to market this thing? And of course, you know, marketing is a hundred percent, one of these 10 reasons. But to me, we got to start with a clear vision.

It’s like, would we ever take a road trip without a destination? Right. No, absolutely not. If we did, you know, we could just drive around in circles and that would be fine. no destination. It doesn the truth is that’s what are doing, literally driv every day because we don actually going and what w

Rick: I can think of a ago and you know, pretty and you got into land dev And the culture at his company, it was just toxic, just toxic.

And you could tell them employees are walking on eggshells. And, and, and I, I kind of, I think going back to what you’re talking about, I kind of attributed that lack of clear vision for there, you know, you wanted to be a builder and he was doing all sorts of different stuff, but he has hand and everything.

And I think without that clear vision too, it’s like you just sort of. Point the fingers, you know, you did this wrong, but ultimately it’s the, it’s the leader, right? That sets the pace and it’s the leader’s vision is, and, and you gotta get the people to follow that vision.

Randy: Well, and, and I think far too often what happens is.

We as business owners get pissed off with people not doing what we want them to do, but we’ve given them no direction or roadmap to be successful because we don’t know what that looks like ourselves.

Rick: Right.

Randy: Right. And therefore, again, it, we have to have a clear vision. Now, again, in the book and what we break down is how valuable that vision is, and then how to leverage that vision into what we call our success system.

The whole success system starts. With that clear vision, which is, you know, we’ll talk three years out. I like looking three years out. Of course we can look five and 10 years out, but three is a, to me, a long enough period out, but it’s not so far. We can’t envision it. So three is this perfect number for me.

Now, what I like to do is reverse engineer that our sales, our system itself to success is let’s reverse engineer that three year vision. Let’s take that down to what would have to happen if that were to be true. And we to hit that in the next three years. What do we got to do in the next 12 months?

Rick: And

Randy: if in the next 12 months, if that were to be true, let’s reverse engineer that and say, well, what do we got to do in the next 90 days?

Because. Our whole business and program and success system is about taking 90 day chunks. Now that’s only 13 weeks and looking 13 weeks out with everything in alignment to where we want to go. And now I know if the next 90 days were to be true, what do I got to do today? What do I got to do right now, this week, that’s going to move the needle towards where I want to go ultimately in three years.

But with my 12 year goals in mind and my 90 day game plan. So how do we create a game plan if we don’t know where we’re going? So at the end of the day, all of this gives us the ability to know what we’re doing this moment today. So what’s most important now, I know we’re going to be put, I know how busy we’ll be.

The business will suck us in the business. The business will keep us busy today. But is being busy today going to get you anywhere to where you want to go?

Rick: Yeah, right. You’re true, right? No, it will. Absolutely not. It’s just gonna, it’s actually going to keep you from getting to where you want to

Randy: go. It’s keeping you from getting to where you want to go, which comes back to the whole reason why we talk about this stupid thing, the hamster wheel, right?

Because not having a vision is going to keep you on the hamster wheel. Every one of these 10 reasons will keep us on that hamster wheel. And it starts with vision. So if we jump to number two, We get that vision, right. And we know what our plan is. We have a game plan and we’re very dialed in and we’re niche down.

As you had said, now we’re actually starting, like we can really get focused on what moves the needle. How am I going to get there now? What has to change? Who has to, who has to be on my team? I can really start understanding what moves I need to make today because of what I’ve figured out in step and reason.

Number one. So reason number two is the next biggest challenge for builders and remodelers. As far as I’m concerned. Because, hey, we’ve come into this business, not usually, I mean, there’s a percentage that do, but the biggest percentage came into this because we had a skill. We had a talent. We were good at what we did.

And we thought, geez, I could do this better than who I work for. And I’m going to start my own business, but I don’t have business savvy. I don’t have business. We call it a lack of business savvy. I don’t have a business degree. I don’t have a business background. I know what I know how to build. I’m very good at that.

In fact, I’m extremely good at that. But at the end of the day, I don’t have this business background. So it’s very difficult for me to make decisions as a business entrepreneur and leader and visionary leader. That is going to help me understand what I do to get to my vision from a business perspective, not from the field know what we do, what we do to build home.

We do a great job of that. I’m not talking about the what I’m talking about the how, right? So what we do, we’re exceptional at, but how we do it. We just, we don’t know what that, how that converts to leveraging our time, leveraging and building our teams. building systems and creating a real profitable business by understanding the numbers.

So all of those things from a business savvy standpoint, we typically struggle with. And so a lack of business savvy will not get us to where we want to go. And that’s one of the reasons we got to get dealt with.

Rick: You know, it’s so it’s so true where You, it seems like you talk to to a lot of builders and when they fall into one of two camps, one is they enjoy the front end selling, talking to the customer, sharing the design, you know, you know, kind of what their visions are or the back end is they love to be on the job site.

They love the production. They love the trades aspect of it. Not part of it. But there’s very, very few that understand that they really need to be looking at this business as a CEO, right? They need to see themselves on the front end or the back end, but not as the C as the CEO. And that’s a very, very good point is, you know, and I think a lot of it probably has to do is like, they don’t know what they don’t know.

And

Randy: that is it. That’s nail on the head, man. And the truth is they know what to do in on site, in the field, building great quality product, right? Like that is, there’s no question about that. Right. But if we’re going to take this business to another level and create something of real value, That’s scalable.

That’s a well oiled machine. We need to have some of that. I, we call it business savvy.

Rick: Yep.

Randy: Right. So until we have that business savvy part, that’s latched on to our vision and where we want to go, it’s extremely, it honestly, I don’t think it’s difficult. I think it’s near impossible.

Rick: Right. And going back to the e myth, right.

You know, you’re spending all your time working in the business. You don’t ever pull back and work on the business. And so you don’t really understand you if you’re going to scale the business, obviously, what do you say a guide to freedom through growth and scalability. That freedom never comes unless you’re working in the business

Randy: And when you mention that tagline, right this guide to freedom through growth and scalability I think a lot of people Think and we hear this all the time, right?

We go. Well shit. I got no time now So if you’re telling me I double triple my business that’s going to give me more time Like that frightens the hell out of most people, right? But the truth of the matter is until you double triple your business There is no freedom because where we typically at right now You There’s not enough people and teams and resources around us to get us any freedom.

Rick: Exactly.

Randy: Right? So, understanding that and, and what is required there. Now you talked about working on the business and not in it, right? So here’s the, the, the challenge that comes about working on it. When we talk about getting people some time to get freed up in the business, let’s say we put some people in place.

We got some systems, they’re doing what they need to do. Now you get some time to work on the business. Now we’re deer in headlights because it’s like, what the hell does that mean? What, what is working on the business mean? What do I like? I’m most comfortable. And this is what typically happens is when we get that time to work on the business, we tend to find ourselves floating back into the field because that’s where we’re comfortable, right?

Right. So I like being behind a desk or starting to figure out what I do on the business is, It’s like that’s uncomfortable as hell. I’m not even sure what that looks like Then I tend to find myself back in the field because that’s where i’m comfortable But then we’ve lost all the momentum to actually do something special with the business Yeah, right.

So we talked about this, you know winning lottery ticket in our pocket, right?

Rick: and

Randy: We will never cash in a winning lottery ticket until we can figure out the business savvy part And and which really leads to when we think about lottery ticket and money You Is number three, right? It’s really, it’s, it’s the lack of what we call financial literacy, right?

So now it’s about numbers. If we don’t understand the numbers, how do we possibly make good decisions in our business? So we got to get some business savvy, but we have to be financially literate as well. I call it financial literacy because we really have to understand what the hell the numbers mean. We got to be able to make decisions from those numbers.

Believe me guys, your business. The ultimate scoreboard in your business. I believe there’s a ton of metrics that we need to understand in our business Understanding metrics in our business is where business savvy.

Rick: I just I just was thinking about a conversation I had last night smaller remodeler.

He said to me I did three three hundred thousand dollars revenue in 2022 10 margins Net margins. Okay, great. He goes. I did a million in 23. I made three percent He goes so in other words, I tripled my revenue and I made a same amount of money I tripled my headaches. I tripled my workload and the same amount of money He goes either I gotta figure this out or I gotta I gotta you know, go work for somebody else

Randy: well, and the other thing is, you know when guys get to three and four million and they’re at a point of You know, this chaos frustration and overwhelm where it’s not even sustainable anymore about their own.

Like, you know, I always say, God, God forbid you walk over a bridge cause you’re going to jump off. So don’t, don’t do that because you’re at that point in your, you know, lifespan of this business where it’s like. It’s sucking up our life, right? So as we grow in scale, are we making more money? Are we more profitable?

And then what are decisions are we doing with that? So it’s the combination of that business savvy with financial literacy, that’s absolutely critical. I don’t know how anyone can price a job intelligently without financial literacy and doing it from a set of numbers, which is the ultimate scoreboard is our financials.

But how do we know if we’re winning or losing if we don’t know how to read the score? And so there’s our financials, if we understand financials enough, and I can look at a set of financials and I can tell you exactly I can. It’s like reading a book. I can read the story of your business over the period of time that you show me as to what’s happened, how things went, where you, where you brought people on, where things fell through the cracks.

So basically if you think about financials, and it’s been said, and Keith Cunningham is where I heard this from. I love Keith. And, and the way he simplifies things too is that at the end of the day, you know, accounting is the language of business. Mm-Hmm, . And if you don’t understand the language, how can we be financially literate?

So I called that being literate is understanding the language of business, which is accounting. And you don’t have to becoming a a, an accountant. But you you better understand those numbers so that you can understand how you make decisions Because every single decision should be made from a set of your numbers Your financials in your business that tell you that that’s a good decision or it’s not

Rick: and

Randy: so we’re doing hey Here’s the other this is the perfect scenario, right?

It’s like would you get on a plane if the you knew that the pilot? Had no idea how to read the dials in the cockpit, right? You you will you will get On that plane, that’s right, right you get off in a hurry Yet we’re flying the plane of our businesses every day without understanding those dials Right.

And so that’s where it’s like, no wonder sometimes we’re going to crash or we certainly aren’t very safe and we’re not comfortable and we have to understand the dial. So being financially literate is understanding the dials in the cockpit so we can fly the plane of our business. Properly making the right decisions from a business savvy standpoint.

Now, when we combine those two things, and to me, those two things are the most powerful two things we can possibly have. Cause after that, everything else will fall into place and start making sense. We can deal with the rest of these seven. Once we have those two things, and we’re starting from a starting point of a, of a real clear defined vision.

Rick: Yeah,

Randy: that’s powerful and makes sense to us. Does this like make sense?

Rick: Like, absolutely. I love how you love how you put these together. So just to recap, number one is having a clear vision. Number two is a lack of business savvy. And then number three is a lack of financial literacy. Yep. So what’s next?

What’s number four? So

Randy: number four, and this one just follows financial literacy and we’ve already kind of touched on it, but it’s a lack of pricing mastery because what I see is we’re, we’re pricing projects without that financial literacy. And we’re pricing projects that we don’t really know if they’re going to be profitable or not.

We hope the hell they are. And at the end of the day, we’re usually too damn busy to actually do any job costing because we’re just trying to catch up with the day to day. And so we’re flying by kind of the seat of our pants that we hope the pricing’s right, but far too often, there’s just no money at the end of the day.

And we scratch our head cause we thought we should have made money and we’re pricing this right. But we don’t get the so the whole thing needs to start tying together and when we start syncing these things It becomes so much easier, you know Again, it’s it’s like if we don’t know how to read chinese That’s kind of what we’re out there doing with our pricing because we’re throwing shit against the wall and it’s like it’s not working Well, why why is it working?

Well, I don’t really know and so we’ve got to understand Once we get that financial literacy that our pricing mastery has to start coming in. We got to understand how to price jobs for real profit. We got to understand what real profit is and what profit we require in order to build teams and have some resources, enough resources to actually build A players.

Because here’s the thing. If we don’t price jobs properly, then we don’t have enough of the profitability. In our business. And we end up, Hey, when we need to build our team, we end up having to pay less for the people we really need. And because we don’t have the money we find, we can’t be profitable. So we end up getting C players instead of a players.

And that creates more and more problems.

Rick: Yep. Yeah. I was just thinking that a couple of things there, as far as pricing mastery is we, I remember working for a builder and this is what I was with with well, probably more, I guess I call them a semi custom home builder, so we built a lot of specs and market was turning and it was always like, should we build the spec?

Should we not, you know? So typically what happened was of course the estimator would say, okay, this is how much it’s going to cost to build it. And they would put their, whatever margin on it. And I said, you know, really ultimately who is going to determine the value of the spec? Is it the estimator or is it the consumer?

Is it the buyer in the marketplace? So what we started doing is we would give the prints to the salesperson. We would say, do a competitive market analysis on this and tell me what this home would sell for. Then we came back, we took that, we gave it back to the estimator and say, this is what we can sell it for.

Now, what can you build it for? And then what’s the difference? How much do we have left for profitability? Now, does it make sense to build it? Yes or no. And if it didn’t. We’d say, no, this isn’t a good market to build it. And we’ll go to a different market or a different lot or a different plan. And we look for that hole in the market.

And at the same time, I also remember at one point saying some of these options, you know, we’re priced out at home. I said, some of these options, like these are too cheap. You know, we can get more money for this. It’s like, why are we letting the estimator dictate what this should be sold for? So in other words, if you’re marking everything up the same rate, you’re probably leaving money on the table or you’re, You’re pricing yourself out of a market where it’s an easy objection for the buyer versus to say that, Oh, you know what?

Okay, a recessed light as an example. Well, you know, if it cost me 50 bucks, okay, well, I’m going to mark it up 75 do a 75 markup on it. Okay, and I’m going to retail it for whatever, 100 bucks. Well, maybe the consumers want to pay 150 for it, you know, so we just left that 50 on the table. So it’s the other thing I really saw is that is that If the estimator is always the one producing the price Oftentimes there was money left on the table, you know, or we overpriced something We went way too high in the market and then we got we got killed in carrying costs, you know, we couldn’t dump this

Randy: And rick, here’s what?

I believe we have to be doing and, you know, we often hear it’s like, well, what’s the market bear, you know, what, what’s my competitors doing? Right. So I’m trying to compete against competitor. Now, what is, I’m going to say 80 percent of your competitors. Have no effing clue how to price a project to make it 90%,

Rick: right?

Yeah.

Randy: And nine 90 is probably more like it. So they don’t know how to price a project yet. We’re trying to compete against that. Why? It makes no sense. We cannot compete against a competitor that doesn’t understand their numbers because they’re not financially literate And so they’re so we’re pricing against something that will never make us any money So what we have to do and we’re going to get into the 10 reasons We’ll do another episode of this with the the last five when we wrap this up which comes down to marketing and sales the acquisition machine Because we have to show up to be able to close deals at higher price points than our competitor You Because their competitor doesn’t understand what they’re doing and they’re not making any money and we better not be competing against them.

So I don’t care what the market is because the market is dictated by a bunch of people that do not understand how to grow and scale a business. So we have to go beyond that and step outside that box. So understanding these first few things. Is critical. Now we better be pricing from a standpoint of understanding our numbers as to what is going to be profitable for us based on how we currently run and operate our business.

Cause we’re pricing to, you know, say, well, I can put this markup on it. Well, is that markup going to make me any money? How do I know that? Well, I should know that if I, if. If the rest of the pieces come together, I do know that. So four level coach in our system is there to give you the tools and the guidance and the structure.

In fact, this book is here to tell you that. So get this book on Amazon. I get wound up about this because it’s like guys, you know, don’t, don’t go out and try to compete against somebody that doesn’t know what they’re doing. You got to figure out how to do it. So you know what you’re doing. And then you got to figure out how do I then outsell them and show up differently than they are separate yourself from that competition so you can actually grow and scale a business because otherwise hamster wheel and no cashing in that lottery ticket because it’s there once you figure out this, right, so I’m going to say it’s simple.

It’s not easy. In fact, we’re giving you every tool you need. In fact, this book is littered with tools and systems and spreadsheets. And in fact, in the front of this, there’s. No two pages of QR codes and links to all the tools digitally on our website. Right? So, so everything that you need to figure this stuff out is in this book, you know, and our program is designed to help you execute on it.

So the tools are there, the information’s out there. It’s a matter of who is listening to say, I’m tired and fed up with what I’m doing. And I’m no longer going to be the guy that’s hasn’t figured this out. Because as long as you are, you’re going to be struggling and stuck. And at the end of the day, we need enough money to pay for your services, but when we can’t afford your services, we struggle to get more of the right opportunities in our hands to grow our business.

Rick: And the builder of the email me once and he goes, man, I love your ideas. I sure wish my business made enough money where I could invest in marketing.

Randy: Right.

Rick: Yeah.

Randy: But, but, and, and I bet he was absolutely, or he or she was absolutely correct that the business couldn’t afford it at the time. But the truth of the matter is until you can afford it, until you figure out how to do this, you’re How do we ever get there?

This is part of the formula cashing in the lottery ticket.

Rick: Well, it’s like anything else. It’s like, you know, it’s, it’s an uncomfortable area for builders, right? Cause they don’t understand it. But when they have, when you have a roadmap and you see, Hey, I, I know how to get now to point Z cause I can start at point a here and go and go forward.

Now it makes it a lot more. Palatable. And that’s, and that’s the idea of, you know, reinvesting in your business through working with professionals like yourself. So you get that roadmap. You don’t have to try to recreate the wheel. And obviously mistakes can be very costly, if not deadly, right? Oh, yeah. And so like, hey, let let somebody else that’s already made all the mistakes guide you, you know, right.

And help you.

Randy: I, I, I figured that out for myself in back in 1998. I started my first business in 95, 3 years later. I knew enough to know I didn’t know nearly enough and, and it’s one of those things it’s like, we don’t know, we don’t know, but the not knowing what we don’t know is killing us. It’s actually what’s stopping us from having a different life, a different lifestyle you know some breathing room and freedom and, and, and some ability to be at our kids soccer games or, you know, whatever we’re doing in life that we can’t get to because we’re sucked into this thing.

And that’s really why I started the business so that, you know, I can share some of this stuff so people don’t have to go through that. And there’ll be a percentage of people that actually wanted and are willing to do what it takes to get there. Let’s hit number five before we run out of time,

Rick: you

Randy: know, and number five is the lack of time mastery.

Right. Because once we understand all of this stuff, we have to understand how we leverage our own time. How we’re spending 24 hours in a day. Why can, you know, me, for example, I have stake in several businesses across the country. I run this, I have a partnership in a plumbing business. And when I say stake, it’s, it’s in builder remodeler business.

So like. How can, you know, Elon Musk, a great example, how is he involved in in that number of that high level of business, right? All the same 24 hours. So how we are using our time. Is a direct correlation to your ability to be successful. And so when we are not leveraging our time and, and so we have a time finder system, it’s talked about in the book, how we, I believe we have to go through this system of analyzing where we’re spending our time, where we’re working on or in the business, what quadrant we’re, we live in.

And, you know, most of us are living in the urgent quadrants. So when we are stuck in urgent, we never get to the not urgent, but extremely important. That’s the quadrant we need to live in. That’s where all the gold is. That’s where all the vitals and the needle movers are all exist there. But when we’re stuck in urgent.

Which is the never ending issues, challenges, problems,

Rick: right? But now

Randy: putting out fire we’ll never get to where we want to go until we start using our time the way we need to use our time, right? So, so time is, I believe, one of the biggest killers and, and hey, we can talk about all kinds of ways to time manage, to time block, to do what we need to do with our time.

But typically we will dishonor those because we have urgent things that never stopped coming that keep us on the hamster wheel and never off. Right. So, so we, and then understanding time then allows us to start building our teams differently. So we will often fire people at our problems, but more people at our problems without systems will create more chaos, frustration, and overwhelm, which just completely kills your time and your ability to on any of what we’ve already talked about,

Rick: right?

Randy: Time is a big piece.

Rick: We have this kind of, I used to coach salespeople. And so we, I had this conversation with almost every single one. I would ask the question, well, what’s your average sales price? How many hours does it take you? Do you think of face to face time with that lead? In order to get them to a contract.

And so the example come out and say, well, on average I make 5, 000 commission from this job and it takes me 10 hours. I’m like, okay, so your hourly rate when you are working face to face on that deal is 500 an hour. I said, so anything that you are doing that is not 500 an hour work, you need to delegate or eliminate.

No, and the light bulb would click on, you know, usually it’s like, Oh yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Okay. Which is, I’m a huge proponent of, of sales assistance and delegation and, you know, keeping your, you know, keeping the opportunities in front of you and, and focusing on where, where is the most productive thing that you can be doing.

It’s going to be making you the most amount of money. And, and part of that, you know, Randy, I know you understand this is like understanding where your limitations are. You know, I’m a big, we all, everybody in our team has done strength finders, right? So, I mean, we know. Let’s focus on the areas in the work and what at work where we are strong, because if I’m strong in this area, I can do this task in 20 minutes.

Now, if I give it to somebody that’s not strong. Now, that’s a two hour task, because they just happens

Randy: rapidly.

Rick: Yeah. Yeah.

Randy: So the other piece to me, Rick, is that you, when you do get freed up and you delegate that off your plate and we look at like. Our time finder system will free you up 20, at least 20. I do this constantly and anyone I’ve ever worked with, we can find a minimum of 20 hours a week.

Rick: Isn’t that amazing?

Randy: A minimum of 20. Now when we do that, and we start, and we start talking about, look, if you’re freed up 20 hours a week, literally, and you do that over the course of, 50, 52 weeks in a year. And you think about that amount of hours, what’s the value? What can you do to take the business to the next level?

What’s the added revenue that you can do? What’s the, the time that you can work on the business, this, until you’re able to figure that out. We’re stuck.

Rick: Yes.

Randy: So the value of that, and it’s almost always a million dollars. I mean, it’s a simple million dollars unless the larger the business you are, the more that actually can increase.

It’s easily, if I get freed up 20 hours a week, I could generate another million dollars. Well, why the hell are we not hiring people and putting them on the team to do what we need to do to free ourselves up if that’s actually the case, but, but it’s not really. Figured out or understood as how to actually do that.

And so our time finder system is designed to show you exactly how to do that, who you need, and then what systems to put in place to actually accomplish and execute that. Because. There’s a million dollars sitting on the table, yet we’re fearful of bringing somebody on the team to free us up because we can’t afford that today.

So if we’re true entrepreneurs, there is a factor. We have to be risk averse to be able to jump off the cliff and make decisions. But again, if we have financial literacy and some business savvy, It makes it a whole lot safer for us to jump

Rick: leap and the net will appear, right? I mean and but it comes down to I think the fear of the unknown, you know We’re just the inability to take a risk Is this there’s that fear the unknown overwhelms you and you just say stuck on the hamster wheel So let me recap here randy So again, the name the name of the book is 10 reasons why builders remodelers fail to grow So number one lack of a clear vision Number two, a lack of business savvy.

Number three, a lack of financial literacy. Number four, a lack of pricing mastery. And then number five, which we will cap at today is a lack of time mastery. So we’re going to come back in another episode and do items six through 10. You know, this has been fantastic. I, Love where you’re going with this and the thought and the thought process.

And obviously you’ve proven it.

Randy: Yeah, yeah. I mean, like again, we’ll, we’ll refer to this as it’s simple. Once you have the systems in the formula to execute it, it’s just not easy. But it is simple and you just need the structure, you know we often refer it to eating an elephant. What we’re trying to accomplish here with these 10 reasons is eating an elephant.

You need the bites. You need what bite to eat in the right order. But again, guys, remember, number one was if you have the vision and that’s clear, the bites become much more apparent.

Rick: That’s right. Yep. That’s right. So to get the book, you can go to your website for level coach. com backslash books. And so if you’re listening on the podcast here, it’s four level coach.

That’s the number four level coach. com forward slash books. And if you are watching online or seeing this, you can go get the link right below the post here. We’re gonna have you back for part two here. Randy, thanks so much for the, the, the wisdom here today and for, for thank you for every those, for all of you joining us here in conversations that convert my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

Always. We’ll see you next time on Conversations That Convert.

PART II:

Rick: Today in Conversations that Convert we’re working on part two of 10 reasons why builders and remodelers failed to grow

Narrator: Welcome to Conversations that Convert every week We’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers home improvement companies and home builders Conversations that Convert is brought to you by builder lead converter your perfect sales assistant and now Here’s Rick and Daiana

Rick: Hey everyone, welcome back to Conversations that Convert diana is off today But we have a very special guest with us again for part two Randy stanberry from four level coach randy.

Welcome back to Conversations that Convert.

Randy: Hey, thank you And no, I am not Daiana. I am randy yeah, man i’m excited to be back that first episode was extremely cool walking through the first Five of the ten reasons why bilder’s remodelers fail to grow and You know, at the end of the day if we do not get these 10 reasons solved and we don’t become masters of these 10 reasons, we will never be able to grow and scale.

Now we can, we can make a good living, but really there’s a fortune to be had when we solve these 10 reasons, when we master these 10. Right. So when we’re going through these guys, think about the fact that. If any of these resonate with you that it’s like, I’m not a master in that area yet, then we will always be stuck until we can master that.

And, you know, Rick, I’m sure we talked about it on the first episode, but. You know, we always refer to that builders and remodelers have literally winning lottery tickets in their pockets, and you know as well as I do, if you get these, these 10 set up, you have the formula to cash in that winning lottery ticket.

If we fail in any of these areas, we’re always going to struggle and really never hit the pinnacle of our business.

Rick: Absolutely. And I think what’s the term or that phrase? You’re only as good as the weakest part of your business. And, you know, without that mastery you know, we were just discussing this.

You can be wonderful at production and quality assurance and production management, but if you’re terrible at marketing, no one knows. Anything about you, and you’re gonna struggle just to stay alive. And vice versa. If you’re great at marketing, but you can’t produce a quality product, you’re online world’s gonna be full of, of unhappy clients and, and bad reviews, then you’re gonna struggle to stay alive.

Randy: And if you can’t build great, cheat, great teams, right? Like, if you can’t build great teams that can handle increased capacity, because. Hey, at the end of the day, you increase capacity or increase the opportunities, the lead flow, and they’ve got to turn that tap down because they can’t take the capacity.

We’ve missed the big boat of opportunity. And so, and, and then if we don’t have our systems, right, we don’t have our teams, right? We don’t know the number. So there’s so many of these areas. So if you don’t mind, I’ll rip through that first five again, just so that you know, anyone that hasn’t seen the first episode or heard it, then.

Also kind of at least put that in your head as we move into six to 10. So first of all, we started with number one, the lack of a clear vision and clear vision is what we all need to start with. You know, far too often we’re, we’re, we’re running day to day, but we don’t really have a destination in mind of where we’re going.

So how do we possibly know what we should be doing today? What we should be working on what’s most important without a vision. Vision is everything. So that’s obviously number one. Number two is a lack of business savvy. Right. So having that business background and, and often in this, in this industry, especially, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re builders first before we’re business people, you know, we’re construction first and, and that’s just the way the industry is typically built.

So we’ve got to get that business savviness. And the number three was a lack of financial literacy. So understanding the numbers, knowing these numbers inside out, look, 96 to 98 percent of small business in general, not just this industry, but small business in general, do not look at or understand or know their financials to any degree.

And therefore, how are we, you know, how are we possibly flying the plane of our business if we don’t understand the dials in the cockpit? We got to know those numbers, right? So financial literacy is number three, pricing mastery. So the lack of pricing mastery is another reason. Number four, which ties directly to financial mastery.

If we can get that financial literacy under our belt, then we understand pricing mastery. Now we can start actually pricing for real profit, right? Start to get the dollars we need in the business to start building the right teams. Right. So without the money, right? None of this matters. So that’s why it’s up at the top of the list.

And then the number five where we left off was the lack of time mastery. So if we haven’t mastered our time We haven’t dialed that in if we’re running around doing the things that Are not valuable or unleverageable. We’re not using our time. We don’t value our time enough And we’re doing things that we should be, you know, paying somebody far less to do than we need to be delegating and leveraging our time.

Typically with our time finder system and our programs, we’ll find 20 to 30 hours literally almost immediately with any business owner that they’re doing all kinds of things they shouldn’t be doing. And so they’re leveraging the stuff that does not make them any money. We need to pull that back, get those 20, 30 hours back and then help you get to the next level.

So time mastery. And that’s why we start time before we get into these next five, because until we get our time, right, how do we start getting number six? So the sixth reason. Is the lack of systems mastery. So once we have our time, here’s the thing. Everyone wants to create systems in their business.

They’ve heard of systems. They know what system that systems would be useful But often we don’t know exactly what we should be focused on what systems would be important, right? How they actually work to help us get to that next level But the problem is we don’t have time to focus on it anyway, because we haven’t mastered our time yet

Rick: Right, right,

Randy: like time is the biggest problem of any of this stuff that we’re going to talk about next, right?

Because until we can figure out our time, we’ll never, we’ll be feeling like we’re running around on that hamster wheel, constantly trying to get to the next level, forcing ourselves to do things without systems. Which then creates more chaos, frustration, and overwhelm, which leads us to number seven, right?

That’s the lack of team mastery. So it’s about getting the team, right? But here’s the thing. If we fire people at our problems and try to build our team without having the, our time mastered in any way, shape, or form, or without. Systems that we’re thinking about systems mastery before we think about building our team, or at least simultaneously we fire people at our problem and it creates more frustration, chaos and overwhelm.

And I assure you, anyone that’s hired people out there understands and realizes that, yep, that that’s what happens.

Rick: Yeah, and, and I see, you know, there’s, I see two phases of where we start with the builder is the builder comes to us in phase one is they’re that solopreneur, they’ve hit a ceiling of being able of revenue they can produce because they just run out of time.

They don’t have a team. They’re trying to do everything themselves. They realize that they need to do something different. So that’s getting them through. That is the issue. Number one. And then issue number two is they’re like, okay, now I need to hire people. How do I hire people? You know, how do I manage people?

You know, so I can see that team mastery beams in amazingly critical is when you start to scale.

Randy: Well, and, and the, the thing that gets missed. And often overlooked is just the cost of a bad hire, right? Oh, the truth is the cost of a bad hire is anywhere between, and there’s stats out there. I think the stats are honestly quite low.

They’ll say 15 to 20 grand. And the fact is that’s you, you, you add up the intangibles that you can’t capture it’s, it’s, it’s minimum 25 to 50. And if you’re hiring higher level managers that are getting paid far bigger dollars you know, that cost of bad hire could be like, it’s almost. A number that we can’t even calculate because here’s the thing when we talk about this In our program immediately someone who says well that bad hire didn’t cost me just my time and the and the lost Revenue or income that they paid them.

They lost them clients. They they made mistakes they cost them Project bleed, right? So it’s just an enormous amount of cost now Let’s call it 25 to 50k of a bad hire. Well, I don’t know anyone that we’ve ever worked with that had 25 or 50k to throw out the window or burn right yet We won’t take the time to focus on on at least we have a 10 step hiring process to ensure or reduce the amount of limiting About higher, right?

We’ve got to take the time to slow down to speed up again, going back to time mastery time. We have to, we have to value our time so much more than we currently do, right? We have to look at that as a commodity that we have to leverage and really then say, look, if I was to slow down to speed up, if, if I’m instead of going to hire three people right now, or that one next person, and I’m just going to fire, you know, usually we’re We’re hiring too late, right?

Tell me this doesn’t happen. We’re already, you know, way behind the eight ball. We should have hired months ago. We weren’t prepared for it. Now, anyone that can fog a mirror, you’re in. Let’s get going. I need you so badly, right? And, and that is not going to help you get there. So we talk about having people pipelines.

We have sales pipelines. You know the sales pipeline. You help people build the sales pipeline. Right? But the fact is we need more than a sales pipeline. We need a people pipeline We need a sub pipeline, you know when we run into and and hey when we talk team mastery, let’s not forget We’re not talking about just our internal team with builders remodelers.

We’re talking about our sub team as well

Rick: They’re

Randy: part of our team and if we don’t start our team Yeah, if we don’t see them as part of our team, then there’s First mistake, right? We have to treat them as part of our team. We have to engage them. They have to know our vision. They have to be excited about why to work for us and not someone else.

They got to see what their future is with you. Why being with you is important. That’s all part of developing team and team mastery. You mentioned. Obviously, the systems is one thing training. We don’t train our teams. Well, why we don’t have time, we got to get them out in the field, get them going. That’s more important than the training piece, right?

Because we got to get it. There’s so many reasons why the systems and team thing creates such problems.

Rick: I think you bring up a really good point with the team is that it’s not internal. You have an external team as well. And because obviously the issue today is a labor shortage in this industry. We don’t have enough labor, nor do we have enough high quality labor.

So you have this, it’s almost like, you know builders are competing for the best trade partners in each of their local markets. And they’re trying to find that journal team member. So again, come in and work on their jobs because they know they’re going to get a consistent product. They know if there’s warranty work, they’re going to go back and take care of it, etc, etc.

And what happens, of course, is that this fear of the builder is, well, if I don’t have enough business coming in now, I don’t, I’m not feeding this guy anymore. He’s going to go out and find another builder and I’m not going to be able to get them. Get them back. That’s a huge fear with a lot of builders is I lose that, you know, a subcontractor and now I got to go to my B crew and I know what happens when I go to my B crew.

Lord, help me. My C crew. Yeah. So I think that, you know, it’s great. And we used to do, I’m just thinking when I was working with a home builder in mind, we had every, every quarter we did a breakfast for all of our trades and it was just, Here’s what we’re doing right now, and we would get their feedback, get all the owners there, make sure they felt like they were part of the team.

Obviously, once a year we did a trade appreciation event. And, you know, it was, they loved it. It was really, really important, and they were very loyal to us.

Randy: Well, and, and that is, you know, it kind of goes back to the point of like, when you have developed and you’ve mastered te, you know, team Mastery, you have Team Mastery, that means.

You’ve got systems in place that help them understand what they are going to do for you and how to do it right under your way of doing it right. You have to have your way. Now, if they’re following your way and they’ve been trained properly and you have that training system in place, that’s one thing.

And then there’s evaluation and scorecard and helping them get better, giving them the tools to succeed. And not scorecarding to beat them up, but scorecarding to help them get better, right, becoming a leader and empowering them to go beyond that, whatever they thought possible for themselves. That’s what the teams that I, that I, the only success I’ve ever had is when.

You build great teams of people. It says very little to do with me at the end of the day in the operational day to day, I’m not in any of it ever, right. Maybe, you know, originally back in the nineties. Sure. But you know, moving forward, these are all, this is the teams that will make you your fortune when things are tight and right.

And so the next piece is keeping them. When you have a players, there is a, what we refer to as a keep system. You have to be able to keep great players, a players evolve a players and keep them on your team. And it’s not just giving them more dollars because dollars are part of it, but there’s so much more than that.

And then what you’ve just touched on with subs, Hey, we are competing for those subs, just like we’re competing for, you know clients we’re complete competing for subs. Right. And then when we get that sub, can we keep that sub that has to do with the work? Yes. But how are we treating them? Yep. Well, what are we doing for them that has them want to be with you instead of anyone else?

How do you get that captured sub and run with that? So, and none of this, everything we talk about is scalability, right? We have our four levels in our business, level three and four scalability and sellability. Well, if we’re going to get to level three and four, the only way to do that is to build great teams that stick with you, that leverages the systems with your leverage time by understanding the numbers in our business and pricing.

Becoming business savvy and knowing where you’re going with your vision. And all of this stuff starts tying together. Now this guys, if we don’t have this stuff together, you’re going to have a really good business that builds some great products, but it’s never going to be a business that can really give you a life and lifestyle and real freedom in it at all.

You’re always going to be tied to it. This is the hardest working industry on the planet, right? Working 60 plus hours a week. Easy. Right? Well, if you’re tired of that, we need to get serious about these 10 reasons why we’re stuck.

Rick: Yep, for sure. I love how this is coming together. What’s, so we’ve got systems mastery, team mastery, and what is next?

Randy: So number eight when those things are happening, right? We need then key metrics. It’s the numbers it’s scoreboards. We refer to our metrics as scoreboards. So we need to be tracking what’s going on in a business. So when we lack key metrics and understanding the numbers in our business, what these numbers mean to us, how to leverage these numbers.

So it’s getting the results. So there’s also such a thing as lead and lag measures, right? So if you’re familiar with the four disciplines of execution, fabulous book, by the way, but the four disciplines of execution talks about lead and lag measures. Well, a lag measure is the actual end result. It lags after what we’ve done in the field.

So think about what we’ve done in the field is the lead. It is all of the things, the actions that we’re doing, how we run our business, the day to day operation, is all what we need to track In order to get and improve our results. So if we can improve what we do in the field, we can improve the end result in our financials, correct?

Absolutely. Right. So the bottom line is going to be far better if the actions we do up front. are better, right? Let’s stop the bleeding in our operation. Let’s stop the mistakes that happen on a job. Let’s stop scope creep. Let’s stop the things that are costing us money. So let’s start tracking where we’re having problems in the business.

So we refer to those as IRC’s issues, roadblocks and challenges, right? So the IRC’s are what’s going to one, we have to create our systems around improving and eliminating IRC’s. So that’s when we think about systems guys and you say, well, where the hell do I start with creating systems? What is your biggest issues, roadblocks and challenges you’re having?

What’s the greatest impact? If you could eliminate one of those great system, that’s going to do that.

Rick: Yeah, I love that. So start with the biggest pain point and then work down from there.

Randy: Yeah, and and every day every week we have IRCs that are creeping up. We see these multiple times over and over Let’s not duplicate them.

Let’s eliminate them

Rick: Yeah, right and obviously they change based on where you’re at from a growth trajectory, too Sure. Oh, yeah. I don’t have any issues with employees because I don’t have any. Okay. Now I just hired five employees. I got all sorts of employee issues. Right.

Randy: Yeah,

Rick: exactly.

Randy: And now I’m looking at, well, I thought I had some systems in place, but the systems I had in place work for, you know, me and my small team at that time, but it doesn’t make any sense anymore for the size that we have now.

Right. So this is an ever evolving, always changing, ever evolving thing. You know, peace as we’re trying to grow and scale. And ultimately we have to be looking at the metrics in our business that are telling us if we’re winning or losing. Now we better know if we’re, how to, what’s winning and losing even frigging look like or mean.

So if we don’t have any vision to know where we’re going or goals that are set or game plans that are created every 90 days, how do we possibly know if we’re winning or losing? Right. Are we getting closer to our destination? Are we just getting up every day doing work that. Hey, you know, it keeps us busy as hell, but is it moving the needle, right?

So if we’re not moving the needle We could be a year two years five years ten years many of us have been 10 plus maybe 20 years And we really haven’t gotten any further than where we were when we hit our ceiling years ago

Rick: That’s right. You know and what what you’re what you’re reading in between the lines what you’re you’re telling me here Randy is I gotta stop focusing on working in the business and The day-to-Day Grind.

I need to pull myself out of that and start working on the business. ’cause the only way I’m ever gonna change and make things better is I gotta look at my systems and I gotta understand, I, I’ve got KPIs or the, the scoreboard dimensions, get my systems down, but I only work for me, but work for my employees.

And really, like I said, ultimately, what’s that vision? What’s that business savvy? I, I, this is. This is great how it’s all, how it’s all coming together.

Randy: And, and, and I’m glad you’re, you know, you’re seeing how that, how these 10 come together because it truly is when they all start melding together, they start feeding off of each other to financial mastery.

How do we get any pricing mastery, right? Without understanding the numbers and being financially literate, how do we get to pricing and pricing? Without getting to price it. How do we ever, you know, leverage our business savvy.

Rick: Right.

Randy: So, and, and, and some of this stuff, if we’re listening to this could sound a little elusive, it’s like, what the hell does that mean anyway?

Right. So guys, you can get our book. There are books on Amazon. It’s the 10 reasons builders or modelers fail to grow. Look, going through these, as you see it starting to meld together and you can see it sinking, it’s like, Oh, that makes sense. Right. Now, if, if, and you mentioned the word KPIs and I’m glad you brought that up, right?

So when we’re talking about these key metrics, it’s also referred to often in business as KPIs, key performance indicators, which are the lead measures, right? KPIs, key performance. It’s the performance of our business, which is the lead that goes to our lag. The lag is lags behind all the actions that took place.

That gives us our end results, which are guys, KRIs. So there’s KPIs and there’s KRIs. KRIs are the key results indicator. So it’s the results of the actions we took. Now, when we start understanding and we can start tracking these things, we have what we call our execution loop. The only way to execute anything really well.

Is to track and then review, evaluate, and adjust course. So if we’re not, you know, we can’t improve what we don’t measure, right. And likely we’ve heard this and we listened to podcasts enough. We’ve heard this along the way, right? So we have to be tracking if we ever want to improve, right. What gets tracked and measured gets improved,

Rick: improved.

Randy: So at the end of the day, that’s all we’re talking about. These are simplistic concepts. It’s just understanding, Hey, these are going on in my business. What I got to stop doing is driving a hundred miles an hour with my windows rolled down in the cash in the backseat of my truck with a blown out the window.

I got to tighten up the windows, keep the cash in the truck, slow down to speed up and start thinking about what I have in front of me, as opposed to just trying to get to the next thing. Which often the next thing is. The issue that the next quote, why go and rush to the next quote to get an estimate done when we haven’t mastered any financials or any pricing mastery.

So we’re just firing numbers. That thing we don’t know that is going to be profitable for us or not.

Rick: Yeah. We have no idea if we get this job, are we, are we going to make any money on it?

Randy: And, and likely your bank account might tell you. Or at least give you an indication if that’s true or false, right?

Because either it’s working or it’s not. And often it’s just like, we’re always surprised. I mean, guys are typically surprised at where the hell is the money I’m pricing. This, it seems like I should be making enough money. But guys we don’t understand what it costs you to run your business So therefore, how do you possibly know what you should

Rick: be charging exactly and how many times do you see it when markets hot?

Everybody’s got business. Everyone’s you know trucks and you know, they’re the signs are up And then all of a sudden the market starts to turn and the leads shut off. And then that guy that was beating you on pricing, you know, every single time you’re at, you ran up against him, just keep them busy. All of a sudden he’s out of business, you know, cause these guys, they don’t know their numbers.

All they know is that they’ve got another job in front of them that they’re borrowing from Peter to pay Paul Then the water faucet shuts off. No more leads. No more cash in front of me Oh, so now I realize I can’t finish my work, right? I’m out of money, you know And then and then they’re done and that and that’s it seems like every time you have a little bit of a market downturn You see that in every local market where these builders that you thought were doing so great Because they had all this exposure and all this work and now they’re just they’re dried up and dead

Randy: well And what typically keeps cash flow rolling is just a series of new projects that’s keeping the cash injections coming But the truth is we’re not necessarily making money on a per project basis But the cash flow is there because I just started the next job,

Rick: right?

Randy: So as long as I can keep next jobs starting I get those deposits and, and I use that and I keep my, the business seems to flow. And it’s like, Hey, I’m making a living. I’m living off of this business. But at the end of the day, there’s no real bottom line, but I, I have no proof of any of that because I don’t know my numbers and it’s, and it’s so crazy.

It’s nine and this is an actual fact. 96 to 98 percent of businesses do not know their numbers, do not look at financials on any regular basis. And even if they do look at them, they don’t fully understand how to read or understand them. So therefore we’re making decisions. Every business decision we have should be made from our set of financials.

Rick: Right.

Randy: That’s how we run an operator business. So anyway, I keep going back to the numbers and really that’s why the numbers are up at the top of these 10 reasons. Now, when we get down past the key metrics, we get down to number nine. So the ninth reason. And number nine and number 10 is really what we refer to as the acquisition machine, which is, you know, what you talk about all the time.

So now we’re getting into marketing and sales. So number nine is a lack of a marketing machine. So this is right up your alley. It’s all about the marketing machine. Now, the reason number it’s number nine and not number one, right? Cause some guys will say, well, this shouldn’t just be number one. Like we need leads.

We got to get this rock and rolling. Well, as you and I know, we talked about all the time is the fact that look, if we get a marketing machine rolling. But we don’t have a clear vision. We don’t have business savvy. We don’t have financial literacy. We need to get our foundation right first and rick One of the things that I really like about you is the fact that you talk about having foundation first, right?

Let’s not create a marketing machine that that you can’t execute on leverage Profitably those new opportunities turn them into real gold and be able to build and scale a business

Rick: You know, there’s a there’s a

Randy: You

Rick: I think I think every small business owner does this. We’re talking about home builders and remodelers, but every small builder’s business goes through.

This is where you start the business. And it’s kind of this, the sheer grit will and determination of the founder. And they just sort of grind this business into an existence. And like you said, they’re all of a sudden they find themselves. They’re working. 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They have no quality of life balance.

I’ve got a wife at home who’s getting pretty upset because they never see their husband anymore. The guy doesn’t know his kids are growing. He doesn’t even have any relationship with them anymore. And it comes to a point like I got to do something different. But the idea of having to invest money in marketing is just, it’s a foreign concept because I started off by word of mouth and I did a good job for somebody.

And I took any job that came my way. Okay. I didn’t have any employees, so I could do it. I had happy customers and I built my company up, but I think Randy, what, what happens is, is that as you go through this shift of a solopreneur to say, no, what I want to build a business for myself, I can scale it. It’s going to provide a nice income for me.

And you know, at the end, the bottom line, I think the goal should be. I, this business will run without me having to be involved in the day to day. And Lord help me, maybe I can sell it at some point, right? I’ve built something I can sell and I can take that money and use it for whatever. But getting to the point of where you have to consistently invest in marketing, it’s a foreign concept for that solopreneur, because I’ve never done it before.

So the first question that always is, how Where should I spend the money? And the second question usually is, well, how much should I do it? And I think, you know, you have to look at it more like this. It’s like, if you want to scale the business, number one, those KPIs you talked about in the previous step before this, it’s no different with your marketing.

So you have to understand this is the money going out. I need to get a return on investment for this. What are those key metrics I should be tracking to make sure that that money is working for me? So if I put a dollar out there, am I getting ten dollars in return? Because if I put a dollar out there and i’m getting 50 cents in return, I need to change something really quick But after but after I start to see the return on investment I start to grow the business now I understand This is just a bottom line number.

I’m going to be reinvesting money into my business because I know I spend 3. I get 30 back and I want to grow the business and I’m going to continue to do that because that’s going to allow you to hire the personnel you need to pull yourself away from that day to day. You will have a business that’s going to produce for you, whether you are.

Sitting on a beach in Tahiti or, you know, sitting at the office.

Randy: You know, you obviously, this is your baby and this is your area and why you would say that best, that whole concept there. And the 3 to get 30 is why we refer to it as a marketing machine. This needs to be a machine that you’re able to put in dollars.

And get a hell of a lot more out, get your 10 X back. Right. And until you get that machine working, right. Why I didn’t call it a lack of marketing because a lack of marketing is not what we need. We need a marketing machine.

Rick: Yeah. And I think the key term there is that machine is a closed loop machine because a lot, most marketing has done open loop, which means.

Somebody runs an ad, they put together say a landing page or a call to action on that page, and then there’s a breakdown. It’s a, it’s, it’s an open loop. So closed loop means, every step of that process is mapped out and tracked. So then you really understand, am I getting my return on investment on this?

Because if I’m not, I’m going to pivot. And well, and if

Randy: every step is tracked, as you’re saying, which is why number eight of, you know, the, the key metrics is so important before we even think about marketing. We better understand the KPIs of this, right. Of getting the performance of our marketing. And so that I love the idea of the closed loop.

Because look again, if we don’t track it, we can’t improve it. Right. What, what gets measured gets improved. You don’t measure this stuff and we’re just firing dollars at it. That’s called marketing. That’s not a marketing machine, right? Marketing machine. And this is why we’re very specific in the words we choose because a marketing machine is not just firing dollars at marketing.

Now, when you have a marketing machine, what does that do for us, right? Because we have financial literacy and we understand that pricing mastery and we have some business savvy behind us, right? Those three are so critical up at the top. If we have that together, we understand now I cannot rely on word of mouth anymore for, for a couple of different reasons, right?

Number one is often the word of mouth we have are the wrong people that are in that loop of word of mouth. Very good point. Right. So because they have been who we’ve had along the way, And that now that I have financial literacy and understand pricing mastery, I need to up my price typically quite a bit.

So this loop that I have down here of customers and clients that we’ve had no longer actually. Is the right client so I have word of mouth of shitty clients that are not going to help us grow this business So I need marketing machine.

Rick: Well, and all and and the other I think the other aspect of that is your Services evolve again, you might start off where you’re saying i’m just going to go in i’m going to do handyman work as an example But then now i’m going to move to design build.

Okay now i’m moving from a design build Maybe I want to get into custom homes So So there’s an evolution of that. So that clientele that you sold that, you know, 10, 000 bathroom makeover to, you don’t even offer that service anymore. You know, now you’re doing 80, 000 kitchens and, you know, 500, 000 whole home remodel.

And the people that,

Randy: that they are surrounded with. Are their friends and in their network and their circle are possibly the wrong circle Yeah Because we need to get outside of that circle with people with more money that is actually going to be willing to pay what you need to charge Right. So so there is there is a very very important reason why marketing machine and spending the right marketing dollars Is critical to growth and scalability.

The other thing is at some point growth and scalability You will hit a ceiling you will hit a ceiling with Your network if you’re relying on word of mouth and you know referral, right? Like you you just there’s not enough of that

Rick: If

Randy: we’re trying to 10x what we do

Rick: well, it’s too and it’s too inconsistent.

You can’t yeah How do you hire somebody, you know, and you don’t know when the money’s coming in you’re at you know And the thing that’s crazy about this whole thing randy is it just relying on word of mouth Is that it’s completely under your control? I mean, completely out of your control. And that’s one of the things is there’s so little in life we control, especially in business is that we can control how we invest our marketing dollars, what that ecosystem, that closed loop ecosystem looks like, and being able to track and measure each one of those things.

Those points in that marketing machine so that we say, okay, this is working. Great. You know what? Let’s put more money into more of

Randy: that. Yeah.

Rick: Well, this is not working so good. Let’s stop that change it. Let’s test something else and get this figured out. So, you know, it’s like the worst. I always tell the, our builder clients said, look, if your metric is, did you make the sale or not?

I said, that is like the worst metric you can use from a marketing and sales standpoint, is that you have to understand every single step of that map of that client finding you, going through the client acquisition process and be able to measure it. And where you find an issue, it might be in your lead intake.

You know, that initial phone call, somebody’s doing a poor job of qualifying. You’re sending your guys out. On on bad leaves on bad jobs huge waste of time.

Randy: Well Rick, I I think this also circles back to that You know, business savvy. When we become more business savvy, we start realizing that conversation that we’re having right now about marketing and about metrics, we start really seeing how important those are.

When business savvy starts to kick

Rick: in,

Randy: like we’re no longer from the construction side necessarily. And not that that’s a bad thing. I mean, the whole industry is built from that. But at, at some point, if we wanna take ourselves in the business to the next level, we gotta evolve from the construction side to a business owner and entrepreneur.

That is focused on the right things and understanding why this sink of, of why we very, very, very intentfully set them up in order of one to 10, because it makes sense that these things have to kind of be there as we move through the, through the stages of our business and build the foundation to get to this point.

So then here’s the thing. Unless we have number 10, which if we lack a really truly developed sales system, then we’re going to have a bunch of marketing opportunities, dollars we’ve spent, that we can’t execute on closing those deals at the highest price point possible. So look. Again, if we, if we just wanted to call it marketing, we leave out machine.

We’ve got a problem because we’re throwing dollars at something. If we just talk about it as sales, then it’s just closing deals. And it’s nothing to do with a system that actually moves somebody through builds trust and confidence in you very, very systematically and in, in, in intent fully, very strategically that allows you to then close deals at higher price points because at the end of the day.

Your business, your success of your business is going to have everything to do with the number of deals that you can close at the highest price point possible in order to build the teams around you and bring A players on and not compete against dollars against, you know, shitty contractors that don’t understand the numbers.

Here’s one of the biggest problems that we’re faced with out there. We’re, we’re often competing against those businesses that do not understand their numbers. Do not understand the financial side and have any pricing mastery So they’re firing numbers at it. That does not make sense for you to compete against right?

Because if you do compete against that you are It’s not happening Yeah, you’re not getting to where you want to go. You have to have a sales system that does that now Just share just quickly. We have our sales system book. It’s another book on amazon these are five secret weapons to closing more deals at higher price points It’s you know, whether you want to grab that or not, it, it literally is so important.

This number 10 of creating a real sales system. And, and here is another thing. Often the owner is closing the deals.

Rick: If

Randy: you ever want any freedom and remove yourself from sales, you have to be able to teach train how you do what you do and give that person the tools to be able to close those deals. Not just go close deals.

It’s not about closing deals. It’s about closing deals at a higher price point.

Rick: Yeah, right. Right. You know, it’s interesting how you got this. Stack just want to share one thing on this and why I think anyone listen to this just to help bring it home. So I was talking to a builder earlier about this. I remember it was a guy.

He was he went he went into a job. Did a site visit, trying to get a PSA signed. And the, the lead is balking because they’re getting three bids and the other two builders didn’t ask to do that. Okay. So I said that issue number one, but I said, the reason marketing and sales are really not two separate things, they are tied together.

As I, as I said, this is that, you know, here’s how I do it. I said, number one, I’m going to capture that lead. I’m going to give them a very compelling reason of why they want to talk to me. Once they booked that appointment and want to talk to me. I’m going to send them a survey and I’m going to, and I’m going to say, here’s what you can expect when you’re hiring a, a builder and some of the questions you should be asking as you interview a builder, Oh, and by the way, let’s look at your project, tell me what you need, want, and wish for in that project.

Now I’m doing that before I’ve ever had a conversation with them. The reason I’m doing that Randy is because. I’m going to start price conditioning them before I ever have one word of conversation with them. Why? Everybody wants champagne taste for a beer budget. Everyone wants the most for the least. So if I say it’s part of my marketing, tell me what you need, want, and wish for.

Now when I’m having that conversation, I can say, you know what, Randy, A need for us is designed as something you have to have in this project that is non negotiable. Meaning if you don’t get this, you’re not going to do it. So now what I’m doing is I’m planting the seed from a sales standpoint, is that you are going to have to cut back or increase your budget ultimately to get what you want.

That’s a heck of a lot different conversation then, so by the time I actually go out and have a site visit, I can go through, then I can reinforce here’s the needs, wants, and wishes. I can reinforce why we do design build versus bidding, you know, and get them to understand the value of having that collaborative relationship versus of being all about who’s got the lowest price.

Randy: Absolutely love it. It’s all of that is strategically driven. We’re not, that is a system. This is not just going to meet them next and try to close the deal and understand their project. There is a structure and a strategic next play and next move, which then all, what you’re talking about is building trust because you are building trust.

You are building confidence and you’re educating, right? So education based selling is everything, right? So we’re doing it in our marketing. We’re doing it in our selling. And I’m glad that you brought those two together. Hey, when I started number nine and number 10, I said, the fact is this is an acquisition machine.

Right. The two of these together, nine and 10, they work hand in hand. They are an acquisition machine, right? Then we start with marketing. We end with sales, got to close the deal. And that’s why those last two are there after we built the foundation. I hope this helps guys that kind of rethink or maybe shift mindset a little bit about who you are and how your business runs, how you operate it.

Maybe where some of the areas you might be currently lacking. And if you’re lacking in many of them, you are not alone. Right? So this is the other thing I want to throw out there. It’s like, Hey, don’t beat yourself up at the fact that you might lack in almost all of it. Right. This is not abnormal. We see it all the time, or maybe you have strengths in a few areas, but you know, there’s some that I need help with.

Well, you’ve got, if you’re serious about where you want to go, and you care about where you’re going, and you’re sick and tired of not getting there. These have to get dialed in or you will be stuck for a very long time.

Rick: Yeah, it’s, it’s learned behavior, right? It’s, it’s no different than you’re very comfortable being on the job site, building, you know, doing whatever you’re doing right now.

It’s like, but you started someplace. Yeah. You didn’t know anything. Somebody took you under their wing. You learned it while there was this trial and error or you had a mentor, that sort of thing. And it’s no different now. It’s like, it’s just learned behavior, best practices to to, to get there.

Right. Right. But. I think, I think, you know, that’s a great place to end it on here is that again, I go back to that term closed loop. Okay, so this is a closed loop. There’s 10 items that is really keeping you from growing and growing a revenue, growing profitability, growing as a, you know, a leader, a manager, creating that system that you can generate revenue from where you don’t have to be involved in the, in the day to day.

So I love it. And the name of the book again is 10 Reasons Why Builders and Remodelers Fail to Grow. Yeah, there it is. If you’re watching this, otherwise you can get it on Amazon, but we will put a link to your website where they can get a link to Amazon on there. And, and we’ll also put a link here to, to part one of this interview as well.

Randy, this was absolutely phenomenal. It was great, great information. One of them, you know, and be able to have one to reach out to you. I know they can get on your website and they can book a call to you too, to learn more about four level coach.

Randy: Yeah. Yeah. Website number four level coach. com. You know, feel free to email me directly to Randy.

fourlevelcoach. com. I’m happy to help anyone that is looking for it, honestly.

Rick: Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Randy, for being on Conversations that Convert. And thank you all for attending and for my brothers and sisters in Christ. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy spirit be with you all always.

We’ll see you next time on Conversations that Convert.