“Who Else Wants to Create a Highly Profitable Construction Business?”
(Even If Your Business Is Barely Limping Along Now)
Hi!
My name is Barry Hall and I’m (finally) a successful contractor. I have a thriving business and routinely beat out other contractors when I present estimates - even when I ‘m charging more. It’s a pretty sweet feeling when you win a really great job that you KNOW you are going to be profitable on…
In fact, I still just shake my head and smile in thanks when I get jobs like that… which happens all the time now.
I have to tell you, it hasn’t always been this way for me. For a long time I fought just to get by….
I’m a really good contractor (and always have been). I do quality work. I’ve always worked really hard. I would even say that I worked harder than other guys. BUT it wasn’t enough. I struggled to stay afloat in my business.
I stayed busy with jobs. BUT I never quite knew when I was going to be profitable.
That wasn’t so much of a problem when I was young and single…. I didn’t mind living on the edge.
But after I had a family it was REALLY stressful – especially since I was trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over the head of not just me, but my wife and kids.
My family was counting on me.
There is NOTHING WORSE than wondering where your grocery money or your mortgage payments are coming from. I felt like I was disappointing the woman I loved and letting down my kids. It was killing me – BIG TIME.
I was MOTIVATED to find an answer. I desperately needed to start pulling in a consistent profit and I had to start doing it FAST.
That’s when I remembered talking to my friend Matt. I’d run into him at a high school reunion a couple of months ago and when I was talking with him, discovered he was a contractor as well. He didn’t live in town anymore, but I could just tell he was doing better than me.
Since I’d always heard that the best way to be successful is to learn from someone who had already done what you are looking to do, I looked Matt up. I swallowed my pride. I asked him to meet with me and let me in on his secrets. I figured I’d have nothing to lose.
He agreed to meet me at Starbucks.
I was worried about what he’d think. BUT he said he completely understood, because only a few years ago he’d been in my shoes. He’d struggled too.
What he told me changed everything. I went from not knowing how I was going to buy supplies to being able to consistently make money and take a good salary. And it was simple.
Knowing what I know now, I am awfully glad that I took the time to make that 50 mile trip.
I was in pretty desperate straits at the time. I wasn’t even sure that I had enough gas to get back home, and I only had enough money in my pocket to buy the most basic coffee at Starbucks. No lattes for me. I needed help SO badly that I even missed Sunday football to talk with Matt!
I finally got there, ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, and sat down with Matt. He told me how it had been the same way for him. He used to think that doing an excellent job was good enough. After years of struggling he decided doing great work wasn’t enough to make him profitable. That’s when he started getting smarter about how he did business.
He had run into this guy Nick, who had a free email course on how to run a profitable contracting business. After getting those emails Matt realized he was missing 4 simple things…
I can’t believe the silly things I was overlooking. Things, that (with the right tools), are SO easy to do. I guess I just didn’t know what I didn’t know… Thankfully, that’s all changed now.
You may be wondering why I would pass on these secrets. The truth is that my life has changed so much (and there is so much business available), that I feel obligated to “pay it forward”. If you are a struggling contractor I want you to be able to get the same amazing results I did.
Here are the 5 things that Matt taught me. They have changed my life completely.
#1 Measurable Items
This one was a game changer for me.
Measurable items means estimating in measurable dunits not hours. Matt told me, for example, when estimating a 10 foot 2X4 wall, don’t guess that it will take “about a day” to do it (8 hours). Measure it and have a standard labor production and material cost per linear foot. As an example I have standards of 1.25 hours and $15.00 for materials per linear foot of wall. In this illustration, 12.5 hours and $150 for materials. I just multiply the labor hours by my cost and get my cost to do the work.
That way I can calculate my results against my estimate and make adjustments next time, if necessary. Here’s a video discussing measurable items and labor productivity.
#2 Use Sections and Organized Estimates
Every contractor does estimates (even if they are totally unorganized). Using sections creates the ability to do them faster and more accurately.
Matt told me that if I was bidding any kind of a job, I should separate my estimate into logical sections. For instance: plumbing, electrical, framing, drywall, and fixtures. He said that if I did this I would be able to find duplicate or missing items easily. Because I am only looking at a few like items at a time – instead of every item for the job in a huge list.
Sections also helped him estimate MUCH faster for the same reason it’s faster and easier to find errors. When you’re only working with a small group of related items at one time, you will find that everything goes SO MUCH faster. I call this process “chunking”. You put similar items together in sections, making them easier to manage.
Watch a video about organizing your estimates.
I have NO idea how I missed this, but I had. It sure sped things up for me when I did it. Which meant I had more time to actually do the job. That meant more money in my pocket.
#3. Get Accurate Job Costs by Using Simplified budgets
Then he told me about a program that he used that automatically tied into QuickBooks®. I instantly listened up. I used QuickBooks all the time to pay my bills and my crew. I’d never used the job cost reporting because I really didn’t have any “real” budget numbers I worked from. And, I hated trying to figure out how to set up budgets for my jobs in QuickBooks. It was such a time suck! And I am embarrassed to admit it, but it was such a big pain that I finally gave up trying to create the budgets completely – even though I knew it was the wrong thing to do.
What this software that Matt was talking about does is automatically summarize each part of your budget, section by section, and import the data directly to QuickBooks. Talk about a time saver! He had brought his laptop and showed me how it worked.
I was VERY impressed. He even showed me how he printed invoices from the same update.
I started thinking about all the time and hassle this would save me. I started wondering if there may be a way out of this mess after all. With the automatic update I felt I should dust off QuickBooks and give budgets & job cost another go.
#4. Detailed estimates
At first I was a little puzzled by this one. I kept thinking that I already did detailed estimates. Then when Matt showed me how he could generate a detailed estimate for a kitchen remodel in 30 minutes – my jaw just about hit the floor.
The estimate Matt produced was SO much more detailed than anything I would have ever produced. The other cool thing Matt showed me is the estimate can be sent to Microsoft Word to add pictures, contract terms, testimonials, etc.
Take a look for yourself, here’s a video describing how it works.
I wondered if producing estimates like this would get me more jobs – Matt assured me that it would. And he was right.
It greatly increases my customer’s confidence in me. In fact, I have had people thank me for the time that I take to create these estimates. What they don’t know is that I can do a $150,000 estimate in just an hour.
#5. Templates for Your Jobs:
Most contractors do similar types of jobs over and over again. I, myself, am a kitchen and bath guy. That is one of the reasons that I was so excited when Matt told me about job templates. I had never really thought of it before.
Having a job template just means that you create a single form for each type of job you do. Then all I have to do is change out the quantities and delete the items I am not using for this particular job and I have an estimate super fast. It is really cool and saves a ton of time and removes a LOT of errors.
Here’s a video showing how templates work.
Matt gave me LOADS to think about
During that 50 mile drive home from my meeting with Matt I did PLENTY of thinking. I thought that I could do most of what he talked about on a spreadsheet.
Then I started thinking about HOW LONG it would take to set up. Knowing myself and how busy I was I decided that it was never going to happen – or – that I would start with good intentions and just never get it finished. My life was pretty chaotic at the time. Also, the thought of inputting items into QuickBooks manually again made me feel like I was going to throw up.
I decided that the only way I was going to be able to actually implement what Matt and I had discussed was by investing in the software he had shown me, LiteningFast Estimating. From the looks of it, LiteningFast Estimating looked like it would significantly speed up my ability to get accurate estimates to my customers quickly and professionally.
I could hardly wait to get my hands on that software and start using it.
I just didn’t know how I was going to afford it. I was completely broke, but I could see what a difference it could make for me. I wasn’t going to give up.
I went to the website that Matt talked about called www.construction-estimating.com/Litening.
I discovered that the software not only did all the things Matt told me about it also had a database of labor production and material costs I could get started with.
I found out that there was a FREE trial, and that I wouldn’t have to pay anything at all for 15 days. Then when I did have to pay I could do it in two installments that were 30 days apart.
This suddenly made it possible that I could get LiteningFast Estimating software.
I didn’t hesitate. I got the free trial, and paid for the software in the two installments. It surprised me by more than paying for itself within 30 days. My clients were so impressed with my estimate on a kitchen remodel that they chose me for the job.
Since then my life has just gotten better – more stable and more profitable.
I am so thankful that Matt sat down with me that day and showed me how using LiteningFast Estimating with the five principles of contracting success changed his business.
Check it out for yourself… www.construction-estimating.com/Litening You won’t regret it.