Business Building: Move Your Company To The Next Level!

Words: George Hedley

Is your construction business growing and giving you the results you wanted when you first started your entrepreneurial journey? Or are you stuck in the muck and can’t seem to get moving? As small companies begin to grow, they get bogged down, hit challenges, and find roadblocks that hold them back. These include lack of time, energy, money, people, and customers. Many business owners stay paralyzed forever and can’t let go or grow. They feel they must make every decision and hold tight to the controls. To get your construction business to grow and profit, successful companies follow this step-by-step transition from being stuck to becoming a first-class business.

BIZ-BUILDER STEPS To Build A Construction BIZ That Works!

Step 1 - EMPLOYEE Worker, Manager, Supervisor, Crew Leader, Sales, and Estimator.

Step 2 - Self Employed BIZ Owner Owner is 100 percent responsible for everything as a solo boss and manager who runs the business with low profits.

Step 3 - Stuck Small BIZ-Owner The owner is the business, decision maker, and hands-on, out-of-control and stressed manager without systems, team, time, or money.

Step 4 - BIZ-BUILDER Drafting and implementing a business plan, growing, improving profits, installing systems and scorecards, and building a team.

Step 5 - Best In Class Business Achieving steady growth with higher profit margins, enforcing systems and structure, building a management team and great people, and developing great customers.

Step 6 - Wealthy Contractor Achieving vision, goals, profits, growth, top talent, strong management team, organized, and systemized with leading-edge technology. Building equity, value, and investments.

Step 7 - The Business Works For The Owner! The owner is CEO, visionary leader, investor, developer, and opportunity seeker focusing on growth, high-margin sales and customers, strategy, and innovation.

Will’s Story Will started his successful concrete (non-masonry material) construction business seven years ago. Based on Will’s great work ethic, it grew quickly to $4 million in sales with fifteen employees. Then it stopped growing and his profits began to slow down and shrink. He was stuck on Step 3. When his company was smaller, it was easy for him to act as the ringleader, process the workflow, and meet with customers to keep them happy. But now he had to work harder and harder to keep his company above water. Will (name was corrected from Bill) was frustrated and needed help. While he had a few supervisors and key foremen, he didn’t delegate much responsibility. He was still preparing every estimate, scheduling the crews, buying the materials, and negotiating every subcontract and contract. When he started his company, he had time to find new customers, manage the work, and make sure everything went well. But now that wasn’t happening, and customers were demanding better supervision, lower prices, and faster schedules. Will was stuck, and his old ways of running the business weren’t working.

Decide to Move to the Next Level! When business owners get stuck at the same level for years, they stop enjoying their workload because they have more responsibilities, demands, and pressures than they can handle. So, what should they do to get unstuck, improve, make more money, and grow their revenue?

Refocus on what you want! Stop and remember your original dream of owning a growing and profitable company that achieves your vision and goals, is organized, makes lots of money, has great customers, and is run by accountable managers and supervisors. It also provides you the freedom and time to enjoy the benefits of a business that works for you, versus you working too many hours for too little money.

Realize you are a builder! You’ll never reach your goals if you don’t grow and increase your profits. Are you too busy working to make good money? You doing the work does not make you rich as it keeps your head in a ditch. To grow, you’ve got to let go, hire, delegate, develop, and enforce systems, and only do what you do best. Most successful construction business owners focus on sales and building customers versus managing projects. Growth starts with customers who want what you sell, and you are likely the best salesperson in your company. You must make time to go out and build relationships with high-margin loyal customers plus find new ones.

Replace yourself with systems! To delegate to your team, you need written and enforced systems and procedures in place which don’t rely on you directing every move and decision on every issue, activity, and transaction. Put your standards on paper, train your people to use them, and hold them accountable to follow them. This is how you get beyond YOU as the business. Systems allow you to get out of doing and supervising work and create time to make building your business the top priority.

Hire the best! When you know where you’re going and have systems in place, you can start to build a strong management team prepared to take your company to the next level. Good people without written systems can’t do a great job without your constant input.

Enjoy the ride! With your company organized and growing, you can now focus on creating more opportunities for your business to prosper and grow.

As Will’s company grew, he learned to delegate and assign more responsibility to his managers. As they stopped relying on him to make decisions for them all day, they started to see the company’s potential, and got excited about their new roles and responsibilities. To grow, they next needed to standardize their operational field and project management systems. With managers in charge, they focused on getting everyone trained to do things the same way with written systems and procedures. As his managers installed systems, Will gained more free time to meet with existing and potential customers and look for better ways to serve them. He also began looking for opportunities to expand by offering new services to his customers. Profits and sales grew significantly, his equity and net worth grew, and free time became more available. Will had gotten out of the ditch and his business was starting to work for him!

To get unstuck, what will you do differently with your time to get your business to deliver exactly what you want? Decide what you’ll do to make this happen, get unstuck, make more money, and grow.

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About The Author
George Hedley CPBC is a certified professional construction business coach, consultant, and popular speaker. He helps contractors build better businesses, grow, profit, develop management teams, improve field production, and get their companies to work. He is the best-selling author of “Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit!” available on Amazon.com. Watch his educational videos on YouTube. To get his free e-newsletter, schedule an introductory coaching session, download online courses, or utilize his business tools and templates - visit www.HardhatBizcoach.com or E-mail GH@HardhatBizcoach.com.

Business Building: Move Your Company To The Next Level!

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