25 Secrets to Skyrocket Your Construction Business
Ready to supercharge your construction business? We’re breaking down 25 proven strategies to grow your construction company. From networking to financial management, we’ve got the insider tips you need to take your business to new heights.
Watch now to learn how successful contractors are crushing it in today’s market. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell for more construction success tips!
Topics we cover on this week’s episode:
- 00:28 – Networking For Growth
- 02:18 – Quality Workmanship
- 03:14 – Customer Service
- 04:15 – Marketing Strategies
- 05:26 – Specialization
- 06:39 – Expanding Services
- 08:49 – Strategic Partnerships
- 09:16 – Financial Management
- 11:11 – Continuous Improvement
- 12:22 – Risk Management
- 13:43 – Pricing and Cashflow
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Wade Carpenter, CPA, CGMA | CarpenterCPAs.com
Stephen Brown, Bonding Expert | SuretyAnswers.com
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Wade Carpenter: Are you ready to take your construction business to the next level? With so many strategies out there, it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Today, we’re diving into top 25 strategies. that successful companies are using to grow and thrive in a competitive market. From networking and marketing to innovative technology and employee retention, we’ll break down actionable steps that can help you expand your business effectively and sustainably.
This is the Contractor Success Forum. I’m Wade Carpenter with Carpenter Company CPAs, and with me is my co host, Stephen Brown with McDaniel Whitley Bonding & Insurance.
Stephen, you’ve worked with , countless contractors over the years. From your experience, which strategies do you see as the most impactful for a contractor looking to scale up?
Get out and network
[00:00:42] Stephen Brown: Of course, the most important thing is knowing what you’re doing. That’s a given, right? Knowing your trade and being good at your trade. What I see a lot of good contractors doing is networking. So many times whether you’re hard bidding jobs or you’re a residential contractor, whatever kind of contractor you are, networking gets work coming through your doors.
People do business with people they like. Networking can be done on the largest scale or the smallest scale. And it’s a way to get out there and let people know, Hey, this is what I do. This is what we do. And this is what we do well, I’d We’d just like you to think about us.= If a situation comes up.
It’s so simple, but it’s so important. That’s the first one on my list is networking.
[00:01:23] Wade Carpenter: As far as my thoughts on networking, it definitely helps and it never hurts. But for some contractors, if they’re doing bid work, maybe that’s not what they need to be doing, or focusing their time on. But if you’re out there trying to find subs or working with other contractors, I think networking is a great way to do that.
[00:01:40] Stephen Brown: I would argue even if you’re doing hard bid competitive work, you need to be networking with the people you depend on to make those bid numbers low. And also networking with the entities that are acquiring these bonds, getting to know the contracting officers, the architects and engineers you’ll be working with. That’s networking as well.
I personally think it’s that important. But we’ve got a lot of them, Wade. What’s another one?
Offer quality workmanship
[00:02:01] Wade Carpenter: I think the next one that we were talking about was quality workmanship. And obviously as you said, when we started, you got to have a good product, you got to put out good work. And I think quality workmanship goes a long way to keeping customers and getting new ones.
[00:02:15] Stephen Brown: Yeah. Your reputation spreads because of the quality of your work. That’s for sure. And it speaks volumes, not to mention how you conduct that work. How professionally do you conduct your work? That’s one of the best sales tools for growing that I know of. And then that kind of ties into you do quality work and you give good customer service.
So even if you’re bidding work, or you’re working for multiple clients or customers, customer service is key. Making sure that the whole process, they’re happy with what you’ve done for them.
Sometimes your customer may be a general contractor, if you’re working as a subcontractor. Sometimes it may be individuals. But whoever the owner is of your project, they need to be happy.
And also I might add there, you need to, understand and exactly what’s making the customers happy and what you can do to replicate it. And there are a lot of survey systems out there that allow you to do that.
Are you familiar with that, Wade?
Fine tune your marketing
[00:03:13] Wade Carpenter: As far as survey systems, yeah, there’s plenty of things that you can do either online or whatever, which also leads into the next one, which is marketing. And, making sure that you got a happy customer from what you’re saying, but, taking that to the next level, whether you’re out there marketing.
And it depends on the type of construction, again, I think if you were chasing residential contractors, or just trying to network, as you said, all ties together. And your marketing plan probably would take a different turn depending on who you’re targeting, but marketing is definitely one of the biggest things you should consider.
[00:03:46] Stephen Brown: And I would say start with your website. There’s no excuse for not having quality images that represent your product. These days, even the worst photographer can take enough pictures of a job site to pick out a few that are pretty good. Or hire a professional photographer. But the images of the work in your completed projects are worth their weight in gold for growing your business and for setting the standard of who you are and what kind of work you do.
Specialize in a specific area
[00:04:12] Stephen Brown: The next one on the list was specialization. Always make sure you started with something that you do better than anyone else. That’s always been a helpful recommendation for any contractor I’ve worked with, every one of them know how to do something better than anyone else.
Even if you’re a general contractor, you have things that you can do in house. You have things that you can manage better than other general contractors. Specialization is a way to grow your business.
[00:04:38] Wade Carpenter: Absolutely agree and I definitely, as far as the niche market, me going straight down the construction market and that’s all we do. That differentiates us from a lot of other CPA firms. It’s the same way with contractors. If you’ve got something that you get really good at, a lot of people are afraid to go narrow and they’re afraid they’re going to lose out on business, but a lot of times it leads to better quality work.
And I’m always reminded of the thought of, say that, a doctor that specializes. You’ve got a general practitioner that spends years paying back their student loans versus a specialist that does something really good that’s making a really good living because they do something very specialized that nobody can do.
And a lot of people are afraid to chase that and they get pigeonholed in doing the same type of job year after year and they make lower profits. So I think specializations are great.
Expand your services
[00:05:27] Stephen Brown: Expanding your services, what you can do for your clients. And what you can do for future clients. We’ve had different podcasts on this subject. And basically on the growing pains and the learning curve of branching out and expanding into different areas.
But sometimes there’s just a natural expansion that comes with the work that you do. And you see it and you know what it is better than anyone else. But that’s how people grow their construction business, by expanding their services.
Hire and retain the best employees
[00:05:56] Stephen Brown: Another key element, Wade, and a lot of what we had on the list were having to do with employees. Hiring the best, retaining the best, providing training and development for those employees.
That was such an important issue to me because honestly, if you have your niche, if you have the ability to grow, if you’ve got a little bit of cash in your company, it’s the time to find the very best people to just let them go. Let them work. You’re their coach. You’re not a micromanager.
You want to hire someone when you’re interviewing them that you ask them questions about problem solving skills. And how they would react to this situation and that situation. You want someone that you get along with. They do not have to have your exact personality. Sometimes it’s better if they don’t. But you respect their abilities and you know what they can do and you support them and you keep them engaged and you keep them interested and staying with your company. So we have a lot of podcasts on that as well, don’t we, Wade?
Invest in technology
[00:06:53] Wade Carpenter: Absolutely. And I’m thinking how so many of these are so intertwined. We talked about the expanding services and there’s a point where that gets too much, but absolutely the training and development of getting good people, also flows into some of the recent episodes we’ve done on AI, automation, that kind of stuff, investing in technology.
We want to have the best people we can, but if we can streamline our operations or take out things that are busy work, can we invest in technology that will save us time, save us money? Those kinds of things I think are some of the things that contractors sometimes shy away from.
[00:07:27] Stephen Brown: Sure. Absolutely. And as you’re growing and you’re changing, your ability to adapt technology. And we, one of the keys we found in all of our podcasts on technology, Wade, have been, those that are used to the technology. And those that aren’t used to the technology need to be convinced that it works and need to stick with it.
At some point you may want to cut your losses. You chose the wrong software or vendor. That’s not the end of the world. But then again, networking, not just with Potential clients, but other people in the trades, they can be such a huge source of information for you.
[00:08:03] Wade Carpenter: Absolutely. Finding somebody in your trade that uses technology that works goes a long way because a lot of people get fooled by what technology, a software salesperson might be pushing for them.
[00:08:14] Stephen Brown: Yeah, that’s right. Beware of that. Word of mouth from other contractors is so much better than what a salesperson is pitching to you, for sure.
Forge strategic partnerships
[00:08:21] Wade Carpenter: The next one, I think we were just talking about right before we started this podcast was strategic partnerships, joint ventures. And that’s something I’ve talked about many times over the years. It can be a great way to grow a company and get into work that,
I mean,
[00:08:35] Stephen Brown: We’ve got a podcast on forming joint ventures, if you don’t know about joint ventures. Strategic partnerships are not just about joint venturing, but it’s about helping other folks in the trade that you respect finish their work, to do their work.
I have a number of clients who have strategic partnerships with good friends that do what they do. And basically it’s not just a continuity issue. If something happens to me, will you finish the job? But it’s, you’re being overwhelmed by work that you can’t handle and other opportunities come up and you need some help. Well, you need some friends there, don’t you?
[00:09:08] Wade Carpenter: Always goes a long way there. Definitely.
Understand how to financially manage your growth
[00:09:11] Stephen Brown: The next one that I wanted to bring up, which is right up your alley, is the financial management of growth. We’ve got so many podcasts on the financial management of growth. The whole theory of just growing your revenues doesn’t necessarily grow your net income. Net income is your income after everything’s been paid.
It’s the final number. I’m hitting you a softball there, Wade.
[00:09:34] Wade Carpenter: You are, but, obviously it’s right up my alley, but I do see it too often, and I would say most contractors see financial management, keeping up their books and knowing where they are, as overhead, as expense they don’t have time to do. They just have to do it because the IRS says they got to do a tax return.
But you and I both have seen the ones that really understand their finances, are on top of it, tend to be more successful than those that don’t. And actually I remember a study many years ago that said that contractors that got regular monthly financial statements made two to three times more than contractors that didn’t.
[00:10:09] Stephen Brown: I totally believe that. You’ve got to know where you are in order to know where you’re going. So the biggest part of growth is knowing where you are and how you’re going to finance that growth. Growing costs money. Hiring employees until the work comes through costs money. Implementing technology costs money. Buying equipment costs money. Overhead support folks and systems cost money.
Yeah, how to grow your construction business involves all of these. And it’s just, I guess it’s nice. I put out 25 Wade. But when you really think about it, so many of them tie together and our listeners can access these 25, we’ll have them posted where you can you can get a copy of that.
Have a mindset of continuous improvement
[00:10:50] Stephen Brown: And, I was hoping to end this podcast on the next one, which is just absolutely continuous improvement. That’s your mindset. If you’re growing, continuously improve. And why that’s so important is you are pushing your organization and you’re not just sitting back and resting on your laurels.
You’re pushing things forward. Things change. You have to be ready for that. And continuous improvement helps you adapt to that, that change that comes as you grow. Wade, your thoughts on that?
[00:11:25] Wade Carpenter: I know we recently did one on lean construction, and that’s all baked into those thoughts of continuous improvement. And the fact that technology changes, everything changes. And if you stay doing it the way you did 20 years ago, You’re going to be falling behind.
I know we had our podcast talking about the technology that’s in like, grading dirt work and moving that kind of stuff with GPS. It’s amazing what some of this stuff can do.
And not just the technology improving, but also the systems. You could write a procedure today, but it could be outdated in six months because somethings changed, or the way the world works, the way regulation works, a lot of these things change and you have to do things differently.
So, absolutely agree that, continuously adapt and improve is one of the key things that I see that contractors need to do to continue building success in their business. But you also have a lot of other things on this list that I didn’t know if—
[00:12:21] Stephen Brown: I was trying to group everything. You know, you can’t leave out the topic of growth regarding risk management, assessing the risk. And assessing risk is what contractors do for a living. It’s what I do for a living in insurance and bonding. You’re assessing the risk. You’re also managing the safety of the project and everything else that’s involved with that growth.
Yeah, Wade, there’s so many moving parts to it. And for the sake of time, I just wanted to hit on the key parts. And I’d like to hear back from our listeners about what they’ve done to help them grow, we can share.
[00:12:55] Wade Carpenter: Well, as you said, a lot of these things are, they’re intertwined. One plays into another.
Get clear on your job costs and price accordingly
[00:13:00] Wade Carpenter: One of the ones that we had talked about was like financial management and the pricing. And one of the things on the list was competitive pricing.
What I would say is finding out what you can afford to do your jobs for, really understanding what your overhead is. And that all goes back to the financial management, and knowing if you’re pricing properly and pricing for profit as well as cashflow. That’s one of the things I preach is pricing your jobs for cashflow, so that you are covering not just profit and loss overhead, but your cashflow overhead.
[00:13:31] Stephen Brown: Yeah. That’s so huge, Wade. And you know, I see, I thought that category tied into the financial management part of it. But you’re so exactly right. Know what your costs are, so you can know what your profit is as you grow and understand that it’s going to take money to grow. It’s going to take more effort on your part, but the more you grow the better you set up your system to grow, I think the happier you’ll be.
[00:13:56] Wade Carpenter: Any listeners got any thoughts or feedback on today’s discussion, we’re always happy to answer questions or hear topics you’d like to cover in upcoming episodes.
Drop them in the comments below, and thank you for listening to the Contractor Success Forum. For more information, visit ContractorsSuccessForum. com. Check out the Carpenters CPA’s YouTube channel or ProfitFirstConstruction. com. If you enjoyed this episode, please share and subscribe and follow us every week and we will look forward to seeing you on our next show.