6 Things Profitable Contractors Do That Clients Never See

Description:

You're selling two products: the kitchen, and the experience of getting the kitchen. The second one is built almost entirely out of work your client never watches you do.

In this episode of Contractor Cuts, Clark and James walk through six habits that separate profitable contractors from busy ones — the invisible work that protects your margin and quietly earns you the referral.

They cover:

• The pre-con coffee — sitting down before a job starts and asking "what's going to go wrong here?"
• The Tuesday job card pass — the three questions to ask on every active job, every week
• PAL meetings — a weekly 30,000-foot view of each job (and how to run one on yourself if you're a one-man show)
• Benchmark walks — catching problems at the stage where they cost $500 instead of $5,000
• Documentation emails — how eating a cost on purpose builds leverage you'll need later
• Pre-start crew walkthroughs — the 50-point checklist that answers questions before anyone asks them
• Why clients don't see any of this, but absolutely feel it
• How to charge for planning work when the deliverable isn't something you can hold

If you're doing good work and still watching profit disappear, the gap is probably in the six things nobody sees.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Hidden Work

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner. And I'm James McConnell. Thank you for joining the two of us again today. Today we're covering the six things profitable contractors do that no client ever sees.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Ooh. Yes. Don't let your left hand know what the right is doing, or vice versa. Vice versa for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

The what we're covering is six different things that you should be doing. But a lot of guys skip all of these things because they just don't have time. They they try to run at high capacity. They're they got 110% of their plate filled. And so it's just falling, like there's no take a bre breath and make sure you're you're doing this stuff. And this is the difference of really being profitable and uh having a really good reputation and losing money and the client being pissed at you.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

I mean, think about it like the gym. You know, most guys are going in there, they're doing bench, they're doing arms, and they're leafing a lot of these ancillary muscles, but really important muscles like your quads and your calves and the fascia and the strengthening things around those muscles. And those are the hidden things that clients don't see.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

James is hard-launching his new fitness podcasts. Yeah. Jimmy and me at the gym. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

So come along for the journey. Uh 13 years old, I weighed 3,000 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

All right. The uh the key of what we're talking about today is the invisible work that we do is our product. Uh, everything that we're trying to do is we've said this a hundred times before. We're selling two products. We've got the new kitchen, the addition, the new home, the doctor's office build-out. We've got all of those as the product of what they're going to receive. But the secondary product is their experience of receiving it. And what we're going to talk about today is the stuff you should be doing behind the scenes to take that experience to where you're profitable and your reputation is 10 out of 10.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

And guys, write this down. You can't control their experience. You know, they're going to experience it however they're going to experience it. You can set yourself up to have the best chance at a good experience. That's right, James. Lightning. Just my brain.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

All right, I'm going to jump into the list. Uh, number one, the pre-con coffee. This isn't anything official. This is, I'm going to sit down before job starts.

Two Products: Build And Experience

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Uh, honestly, before pre-pre-con, but when we, I'm not going to waste time on an estimate, but once we've got it really refined, I want to pause and take a step back and look at it and say, what's going to go wrong here? If I have something that's going to go wrong, what is it? And it could be down to, I'm using a new crew for paint and I don't know if they're good or not. I think they're good. I vetted them. We met. I'm going to go ahead and and check in with my other paint crew to see what their availability looks like. I'm going to start looking at X, Y, and start trying to find if you've done this job for more than six months, you already have experience in something going wrong. And so, what goes wrong on job sites? What can you avoid? And every single job is different and every client's different. This person is really, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot and they're second guessing everything that I'm saying. And we are on, we haven't even started the job yet. And so, how do I solve that? Right. And so

Pre Con Coffee Risk Scan

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I'm going to try sit down, have a coffee, and literally say, hey, I'm just going to think about this job. For me, it's not a coffee, it's in the shower. If I'm sitting in the shower, hey, hey, hey, it's a kid's show. Uh cut to the we've got we've got video. We have video. No, uh, it's I need to just take a second where I'm doing nothing and think through the job. What is going to go wrong here? What can I do differently? How can I set this up? Let's think about the jobs that have gone wrong. How can I avoid that? And it's literally almost self-coaching, self-consulting on the job specific, because every client's different and every job's different. And so some clients, hey, you know what? There is, I've had both the husband and the wife each independently call me about the same stuff. I'm going to, before we start, double down on my CEA. We're going to talk about single point of contact and why it's so important and ask and get their buy-in on that. I need to make sure I circle that. And so starting to eliminate the things that are the paper cuts now that become gashes later that are that are really hurt us and harm us as we go.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Paper cut, gash. Paper cut abrasion, gash, avulsion.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Those are all the cuts. That's the uh I didn't know evulsion was even on there. That's evulsion is pretty gross. Pretty bad. Google it. Cut to the images.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

We've got a video.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

It's my uncle Terry.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

And there it is. There's the live on YouTube. All right. Um, so number one, the pre-con coffee. And again, that's just taking a breath to think about the job. Uh, number two, the Tuesday job card pass. We do with our with our clients every single Tuesday. I want you to have a day that's all office. Now, everyone's got their different calendars. We've got a set project manager calendar that we want you to abide by. If you don't want to do that, great. I just need to know what days are you in the office? When are you going to be available? When are you doing your estimates? When are you doing your job walks? Build it how you want. I've got some guys that do it on Wednesday, some on Monday. What?

SPEAKER_02 6:46

We've got we've got a whole, we've got a whole calendar we want you to abide by. But if you don't want to do it, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

You just got to have a process. You just came off it so fast. You have to do this.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Unless you don't want to, then whatever. I don't care. If you you need to have some sort of a rhythm to your week that you have built in day and a half to two days in the office behind the computer. Get out of the weeds. Stop playing in the weeds. You're gonna get ticks. I like it to be Tuesday because Monday I like you to visit all the job sites because things go crazy on the weekends. Homeowners finally sit around and look at what you're

Tuesday Job Card Three Questions

SPEAKER_00 7:21

doing and start having conversations. And so they all want to talk on Monday about, well, we were thinking those type of conversations happen Monday morning. Or, hey, I really don't like what, you know, I I've been slammed this week and I walked the house. I don't like this pink color. I hate to talk about it. And so that's my Mondays. I'm gonna walk every job site. Tuesday is my in-the-office day. I walked all the job sites. I can now send invoices and create payments for my crews on Tuesday because I was just there yesterday. And so you need a day that you're in the office. What we have, and if you're in coaching, you get this. We have a what we call our three questions that we want you to do on every job card. And we're asking these same three questions on any job that's in progress. One, how accurate is my software? Is everything accurate? My estimate completion date, my Gantt chart, um, my uh selections, my pricing. Get it. We had a change order that we talked about on Friday. I need to put in here and get them to sign off on. I need everything accurate. You're cooking. That was good. Number two, how quickly can I push this? What can I do to push this job closer to the finish line? What can I do? Okay, oh, you know what? Let's turn that dumpster. That dumpster is 100% full yesterday when I'm gonna order a second one and get it and get it turned. Uh, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and uh we're not starting paint for two weeks. I'm gonna call that crew right now and see if they're good. I want to get on their calendar and maybe I can start them next Thursday instead of the following Monday if I can get these other things lined up. So thinking through getting to the finish line faster, if I can pick up 10% speed on the job, that's gonna get me onto the next job quicker and we're gonna make more money and get out of there faster. Yeah. Uh, and then the third question is what can I push to the client that they don't currently know? What here, is there anything that I can thought? I walked the job literally 24 hours ago with them on Monday. We talked through the job, but I'm sitting at my desk. I asked the accuracy and the finish line question, and then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, you know what? I need to let them know that a delivery is coming on Thursday and it's gonna block their driveway. We're dropping off all the shingles. Um, let me push that to them. They what they don't know is that the paint pushed from Friday to Monday. Let me just let them know that because this happened and that happened. I'm not gonna lose any days on my Gantt chart because I'm doubling up cruise next week. What can I push to the client that they don't currently know? So those are my three questions. You do that every single week on your job. The client doesn't see that. They just get an email from you giving you an update. They don't realize that you are organizing the job in the background, you're trying to get it uh through to the end. And here's the other problem of not doing this. Clients are sitting at home thinking, well, they could do this and that pick us up a day. Why, why they're at they've finished the sheetrock. They're now doing siding on the outside of the house. Why don't they have a painter inside here? They should get a painter. They're doing the project management in their head. And so if they're bringing you that idea and you're like, oh, that's a good idea. I guess I could bring my paint crew in here, they're like, okay, I gotta get in the driver's seat. I gotta do it. I gotta micromanage Clark now. And so if I'm thinking through that stuff and bringing it to them or saying, hey, I know I could get my painters in there right now, but because we're doing the exterior, X, Y, and Z is happening, I've got them doubled up to but do whatever. If I get a good explanation because I'm trying to communicate everything that's happening that I can push to them, then we're we're we're staying in control of the job ourselves. Number three PAL meetings.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Weekly 30,000 foot view of each job. Now we're on to the next one, not three questions. Three questions. Yes, number one with the three questions.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Three questions are accuracy, finish line, what can I push? Number three, number the six six.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Okay, let's pull back. Uh so we had the three questions, and we did one, two, three of those, and now we're on to number three of the six. I think we're all on the same page now.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Very easy.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Easy to find. Simple. Don't so super simple.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

So number three, I put on here is a pound meeting. Now, when you get an employee, James, what explain to the audience what a PAL meaning is an employee.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

An employee is somebody that you pay money to execute certain tasks that you agree upon ahead of time.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Great.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

And you pay them an annual. Sometimes it's monthly, sometimes it's weekly. It could be 1099. And when you say annual, what do you mean by that? Um, oh God, there's so much to teach you. So there's 365 days in a lunar calendar. Okay.

PAL Meetings For 30000 Foot Clarity

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Right? Yes. How long are we going to do this bit? However long you want. I'm going to stay in the pocket. 10 minutes. Oh. No, I can't do that. What is a PAL meeting? A PAL meeting is a project manager action list meeting, which is so dumb. So dumb. So dumb. Um, and it's had some staying power, so it is what it is. But essentially it's a check-in. You're checking in with your project manager on a project to basically see how they're doing. You're looking over their communication, the emails that they've sent out. There should be that cadence that we like to see the Tuesday, Friday emails. Are is the job accurate? Is the uh is the invoicing how you're expecting to see it when you're looking at the Gantt chart? Yeah. Uh is the Gantt chart accurate? Are we doing the right things at the right time or are we already off on our calendar? Are we ahead of schedule? Yeah. Are we ahead of schedule because we have forsaken something that should have already happened? Yes. Are we doing things out of order? Because that is only going to show its teeth as you get closer to the end of the project.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Did we get the cabinet schedule? Because we're weeks out on that, and you got to think about it now, not in three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

We don't need cabinets being ordered in three weeks. We need them installed in three weeks, which means we need to talk about it yesterday. It's that type of thing. It's looking through the project, being a second set of eyes for your project manager so that the things that get lost in the weeds get discovered when you not living inside the weeds, enter into the weeds and help people see through it.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

And it's it's a view from 30,000 foot when your PM's in the weeds constantly. And so it's you're seeing stuff. Same thing I said. It's the thing about weeds more. All right. So there's three different types of weeds. You've got your uh I I from the other side of it, if you're a one-man show, you can still do the pound meeting for with yourself. You don't have a boss that it's super helpful. And before I move on, having a boss, being a GM, being a manager where I've got a project manager working for me, the pound meeting is everything James said. And the the beauty of it is that's where I coach my project manager. That's where I sit down and be like, hey, let's talk about how you're viewing this. Let's talk about how you did this. Let's I feel like you're not like, let me give them education on how the HVAC system works and why we've got to do it a certain way. Uh, and it's a spot where they know I've got Clark's brain for one hour on Friday. I'm gonna ask them these things, as opposed to five days a week. Hey, what do you think about this? Cool. And they hang up and they call you back three hours later. Hey, I was thinking about sending this guy over to this job. What do you think? Like those type of calls that constantly break up my week from my project manager really are minimized because they know we're gonna talk about it Friday. Oh, cool. I'm gonna put that on my list to talk Friday. So it helps with giving them an allocated time to pick my brain and to have access to someone outside of the job that can consult with them. Um, but also it's an extra set of eyes that isn't in the weeds that can see stuff that you normally can't see. Um one man show. If you are a single operator or you and have a business partner, but you're the one running the jobs or they're the one running the jobs, you can do this on your own. Every Friday, do your own pound meeting. It's like the Tuesday job card. We're going through it, combined with the pre-con coffee number one. Uh, every Friday I'm gonna sit back and say, okay, what on this job do I need help with? And it might be, I'm gonna go to Chat GPT about this. I'm gonna go call a buddy of mine. I'm gonna call my HVAC guy because he has some like, hey, I'm thinking through this. I was gonna do X, Y, and Z. I wanted you to do Rough in next week. Would it help if I did framing first before that? If because we're only changing the framing in this one area. Whatever those questions are, sit there on Friday and do your pre-con coffee and your Tuesday combined. And we're gonna sit and do a pound meeting on ourselves on ourselves. If you're a business partner, uh, you know, we have plenty of guys that run their company and their wife runs the office. Let's set your wife up to ask these questions and help you think through stuff. Let's let's involve that second partner. Maybe it's you and your best friend from childhood are now running a company together. Let's set it up to where there's some accountability and the POW meeting is support and help. And oh, I didn't even think about that. Thank you. Maybe a conversation.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Maybe you get a silly hat and you role play it yourself. Sure. Taking the hat on and off, asking yourself questions.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

You look in the mirror with the hat on and you take it off. Yes. That's perfect. I think you solved a lot of problems. Uh, number four on the list of six, the benchmark walk. Now, both the pound meeting and the benchmark walks, we discuss with the client. They know we do pound meetings on Fridays. We let the we talk about that in the in the CEA. And we put the benchmark walks on our estimates, right? Like it's part of the scope often of doing these benchmark walks. Both of those, the client knows, but they never see it happening. They know they aren't sitting there on Friday. They just they don't realize it, but I just spent 30 minutes with James and me and him putting our heads together on problem solving their job, and they have no clue that happened. Now they get an email from James with stuff that they didn't think about, like, oh, cool, thank you. That's the result that they're getting from it, but they don't see that happening. They don't see all the benchmark walks because I'm doing those with my crews. I'm doing them with them when I need them to do it. Um, but be being able to have these benchmark walks is going to help me stay profitable. Um explain a benchmark walk.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Um a benchmark walk takes place

Benchmark Walks Before Costs Explode

SPEAKER_02 17:20

when you are about to enter into the next phase of a project, and in doing so, we'll make every change order moving forward uh exponentially more expensive. Yeah. So an example being we're done with uh framing and before we start running MEPs, we want to do a benchmark walk for framing to make sure that uh everything is the way that the client is envisioning it, or if we have a set of drawings, we walk the client through. Oh yeah, this all looks great. But now that I'm standing in this bathroom, uh is there any way we could gain another six inches to the left so that doesn't feel so cavern? Like I'm stuck in a little box. Yeah. Great. Yeah, this is gonna be probably 400, 500 bucks change order. We have to take this wall out, but it's good that we've done this before we ran electrical. It's good that we've done this before we ran plumbing, because then they would have to come back in and likely adjust some of their work as well, yeah, making it more expensive. Then you add sheetrock, much more expensive. Then you add the tile and the trim and the flooring. Everything becomes more expensive after you go past a benchmark.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

And you're also looking at quality. So I can have go back of fixing. Hey, we need to change the X, Y, and Z before we put the sheetrock up. I, you know, I I need to move that outlet, you know, six feet to the left or six inches up, even. You know, it's a not to code is too low. That's a very quick fix before sheetrock. After the sheetrock goes in, it's an expensive fix in terms of cutting up sheetrock, repatching, moving the box behind the wall, all that stuff. So it's the quality combined with the final result that James's talking about of, hey, let's move that wall. Hey, let's change this. I'd like it better this way. I'm also inspecting a benchmark after the sheetrock goes in before the painter start. I'm signing off on one crew to give the green light to the next crew to start because we've all had the sheet rock guys that do a B minus job. Painters come in and paint and they're both pointing their fingers at each other as to who's going to fix it. Um, and so that's what the benchmark walks are for. Now we we put them on the estimate a lot of the time, but a lot of the time, those are for me and the client signing off on stuff. There is a spectrum of project management that I see guys on. On the far one side, it is I'm on the job every day and I'm telling every person that's showing up on the job site what their job is and what to do and how to do it. It's almost like I'm a superintendent. Um, and that's how I'm gonna manage this project. And then on the far other side of the spectrum is I send everybody their work orders. They all have their marching orders. I'll check in next Friday when it's done. And it's this hands-off. I'm just sending them what to do and I'm trusting without inspecting what they're doing. And the benchmark walks are right in the middle. I'm dispatching people out, I'm making sure they know what they're doing, I'm getting their orders. I'm also my benchmark walks are hey, I'm walking this when we're starting the paint, and I'm gonna walk it when we're about 75% done with the paint, and I'm gonna do a final walk on it, and we're gonna walk it together, me and my paint crew, to make sure we're on the same page on all three of those. And so those types of quality inspection benchmarks with my crews that the client might not be involved in is helping me keep things on schedule, communicate to the client. But that's the that's the happening medium between being a superintendent on your own projects and being totally hands-off and just trusting your crews and to just get their jobs done. So those type of walks, the the benchmark walks with your crews that the clients don't see. Um, obviously the ones that they do see that I'm doing a benchmark with the client on it, um, but making sure that I am in control of the job without managing every person on the job side. I got my paint crew, I'm talking to my crew leader. He's got his four guys with him. It's a marching orders that get passed down the down the line, and he's in charge of getting his guys going. Um, all right, so that's number four. Number five, we've talked about this a few times. The documentation email. Absorbing a cost on purpose, putting it in writing. On purpose. On purpose. Again, the client sees that, but they don't realize what you're doing. They don't know the truth of why we're doing it. Um, uh the if you haven't listened to the podcast, it was probably a month ago, two months ago, we were talking about um a uh the most important way to save yourself from ruining your reputation and losing a ton of money on change or or on fixing things is documentation emails, where let's say I'm gonna do something uh I'm replacing. There's a little rot around a uh windowsill, but we're all they hired us to do is paint the windowsills. You know what? I got I got some putty, I can get this, you know, some bond and put it on there, get it patched up right before I paint. That's fine. It's not gonna take it, take me 30 extra minutes. I could go and do the whole change order process and ask for an extra $100

Documentation Emails As Leverage

SPEAKER_00 22:23

to patch that, or I could just do it and send a documentation email to the client, say, hey, FYI, you had some rod around this one window. I went ahead and patched it. It's normally $300 to do that. I just ate it. I'm I'm covering that for you right now because I just wanted to get it done and keep moving on the project, but just want to let you know I took care of that for you. Um, and that way we have two or three of those throughout the job. At the end of the job, when they're trying to negotiate pricing down, or hey, I need you to go fix this. I know that wasn't you, but it needs to get fixed. I can bring up all the documentation emails of all the free stuff I've done. I've done four grand of free work for you. I can't eat anything else. Right. And so those documentation emails keep us profitable. The client doesn't really see why and what's happening. The background, but we're really building our ammunition for if we need to go to war with them later. I've got all of my ammo of I did do this for free and I did that. If you want to pay for that stuff, great, I'll cover this other thing. But it's it's my negotiating um dollars. It's I've got all of this that I can use as leverage on the client understanding, oh, that's true, you did eat that. You did do that for free. Oh, that's true, you did do that. Where I'm separating in their mind the difference of oh, that's Clark did it because uh obviously that was part of the quote. That's why he did it. I owe him nothing versus, oh, I didn't he didn't owe me that, but he did it for free. Thank you so much. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Absolutely. Thank you. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Um, number six, I think this is one of probably the most important on this list um in terms of impact. Um maybe number two, the job cards. Anyways, walking every crew through the job before day one. We've got a 50-point checklist that we want you to do. It's a job site, the pre-construction job site checklist, I think it's called. Um, and it's everything you need to think about and have answers to and discuss with your crew before the job starts. Stuff like cut stations, where are we washing our brushes out? Where are we storing the materials? Where is the PRV? Where is the PRV? Where is the uh electrical panel? Do we have access? Do they have all of do they have a ton of storage stuff in front of it to where I can't access that stuff?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Do they have a dog? Yes. Are there young children? Yes. Do they have nap times?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

When when can we can we not show up to start? When do we need to be out of here by? Um, where can we park? Um Is it on septic? Yes. There there's all of these questions on this list. This is good, uh, that we need answered before starting. And so

Pre Start Crew Walkthrough Checklist

SPEAKER_00 25:00

walking the job, uh understanding all of the answers on that checklist. We don't give the checklist to the client. This is an internal document to make sure that I'm asking all the right questions. If I give it to my client, then all of a sudden becomes a promise that we're gonna do these things. And when one of my guys park in their driveway and on my list, it says, I bet you don't even know where my PRV is.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Do you? That's a construction 101, pal.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Pop quiz. Let's find it right now. Um, doing the pre-con walks with the crews is unnecessary. Uh uh, you can not have those and still have a successful job. But what this does is A, it keeps you profitable, keeps your client happy, and saves you time throughout. Because those 50 questions that we've put together are questions that every crew and every client's gonna ask you. That's stuff that we pick up on normally as contractors, but it's the things that my crew's gonna either ask me about where to cut stuff or they're gonna start cutting tile in the master bedroom because they're doing the tiles install in the master bathroom. Well, I'm just gonna set myself up right outside this room and now there's dust all over the master bedroom. Oh, I thought we were, I thought we were gonna replace the carpet in here.

unknown 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

No, we're not. Oh crap. That's a problem.

unknown 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

So having those conversations where we walk through and make sure that there's clarity on the scope for my crews. Uh, we're also doing the walk with uh with our work orders. What about this? And this is also where I might have change orders because I walked the job with the crew. My electrician's like, Clark, you know what? I we just looked at the panel. You need a sub panel. This panel is full. We got to add a sub panel in there. Oh crap, I didn't even notice that. I couldn't get to the panel when we did the estimate. Well, now we got to do a change order before the job starts because my electrician pointed something out to me. So that's gonna A help me mitigate any issues with the client ahead of time. And B, the the my electrician's not gonna be three days in and then go to do the breakers and all of a sudden say, Oh, we got to pause, we got to figure out a subpanel, and then my entire Gantt chart goes out the window, and I got to pretty much restart the job over once we get the change order approved for the subpanel, right? So doing these walks are are eliminating a lot of issues from the front end. Ooh, all right, that's the six pre-con coffee, Tuesday job card pass through, pal meetings, benchmark walks, documentation email, and then uh walkthroughs with crews before starting the end of the day expectations and those conversations. James, which of these do you think was overkill until until it saved a job? Which of these sound dumb or not necessary that you think is actually way more important than it sounds?

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Um based on uh what people are willing to do, I think benchmark walks is the thing that people are like, yeah, that would be nice. Um, but it's like another thing to manage, it's another thing on the calendar. But in terms of amount that you stand to save in the stuff that you're gonna eat, which it always inevitably goes back to, it's like you're gonna if you miss stuff, I don't care what the situation is, you're gonna end up eating at least a portion of this kind of stuff. Yes. Even if you don't think it's your problem because you're trying to keep the peace.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Yeah. So or well, why didn't you tell me that earlier? And then we could it wouldn't have caught cost

Which Habit Saves Jobs Fastest

SPEAKER_00 28:34

so much to tear it apart.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

You're the you're you're my contractor, you're supposed to tell me this stuff. So you're gonna feel like you need to eat some of it. But with that, and then the their experience of the project, you're doing benchmark walks uh cuts off issues before they start because you're giving them a space to give you uh uh uh issues that you can take action on. Yeah. That is going to number one, they're not gonna, it's not gonna cost them near as much. It might not cost them anything, depending on what it is, but it would once you uh keep going further. So it's just it's one of the easiest ways to ensure that you have a good product and the client experience is on the top of it. You're like, oh, this guy's look like I can take a breath because this guy's got me. I I think if you did if you did benchmark walks and um nothing else on this list, it would have the biggest impact.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Uh and I also Fridays we do PAL meetings. We look at every job, game plan for next week or the next few weeks. Um what you can add into that is when I'm either on myself or with my project manager, what do you I know you're going to every job on Monday. What are the benchmarks you need to be looking at? Like you're already visiting the job sites. Do it with a purpose. Don't just go show up at a job site and walk around like, cool, things look good. Looks good, uh, pain looks great. Like what when I walk in on Monday, what are the three, four, five, eight things I'm need to be looking for to make sure that we're good to go? And I'm again, my pal meeting when I'm 30,000 foot view, I'm thinking about that stuff on Friday and I can make some notes for what my walks should look like on Monday. Instead, I'm most guys just all right, Monday, I'm gonna go hit my job sites. They show up to drive around and they they look at three or four of the things and they forgot five other things that they should have looked at. Oh crap, the plumbing was roughed in. I didn't even look at that. Oh, I didn't, and and it's those types of things, you're already doing the effort. You're already showing up there, you're already driving out there, you're already spending an hour walking the job site. Do it with purpose and have the four things that you need to look at on Monday and make those part of the benchmarks of it, might just be a weekly thing. Every Monday I'm gonna check for these five things, or I'm gonna need to look at this, or my paints done, or my sheet rec's done. I'm about to start my paint, whatever those are. But also in our in our estimates, we put the line items on there. Hey, benchmark walk here. This is we're about to install flooring. Let's look at everything before the floor is going. Let's look at everything before the cabinet's going. Let's look at everything before the sheet rec goes up. We have those type of benchmarks pre-built on the calendar, but set your benchmarks weekly on a Friday POW meeting for what you need to see on Monday. That's going to get you in and out faster and more efficient on your job sites. That's really how you start these because you're already visiting the job. Do it with intention. I think that's that's where I'd push you getting started with benchmark walks. Uh, I think, you know, clients don't see these things. They feel the effect of these things. And that's the icing on the cake. That is where you go from good to great as a contractor. That's the, you know, you did a really good job to you did a really good job. And I really loved working with you. That second sentence is where these things show up, um, to where you get the referrals and the organic growth because you're doing all of this stuff in the background to where the client feels it uh as you go. Um, and also we need to be charging for this. This is why we're worth more than the next guy, because we're we're giving them this. And so the CEA, the client engagement agreement meeting that we have, setting the table of what they're gonna feel and how they're gonna get it, all of the work I'm doing before they get the estimate that I'm spending my time on is all building towards how I do my jobs. And so it's hard to charge more for these things, but you should A, be more profitable because you're doing these things, and B, if you're doing the right sales process going into the estimate, they're willing to pay a little more for you because they feel that you're thinking this way and that you act this way, and this is how your company delivers uh the project that you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Yeah, I mean, you oh, I think a lot of people get a little overwhelmed and intimidated by the thought of asking clients for money for something like due diligence or pre-construction, where the deliverables aren't as concrete as they're used to because they're in construction and their deliverables are the product that they're building. But we work with engineers

Charging For Due Diligence And Planning

SPEAKER_02 33:05

and we work with architects that charge really good money for similar types of deliverables, like your Gantt chart.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Vetting out the entire scope and spending uh multiple hours on site with your vendors to make sure that the likelihood of change orders is decreased significantly is valuable. It's it's insurance. Mapping out the project to so they can see what what's happening when and when we can expect certain things to take place. The Gantt chart's not a promise, it's a tool, but it is something that's valuable. And a lot of most contractors in the residential space don't don't deal with Gantt charts. They don't deal with calendars because of um, I don't know why. It's it's a lot of extra work.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Um and it's back burner, it's uh it's not on fire. And so I'll do that if I have time, but I got too much stuff going on. Or if things fall off the rails and the client's like, we need a calendar. I need I need a full Gantt chart of exactly when and how you're gonna execute this. Yeah. Um, I think that's good. It if you are looking to hone in your processes uh that we're talking about, go to contractorcuts.com, set up a meeting with me. I'd love to talk with you about your processes and what we offer and kind of how we partner with guys at different levels depending on their needs. Also, come to the retreat this coming January. I can't say that enough. It's going to be an amazing, amazing retreat. If you go to contractorcuts.com, we've got some deals going on right now for the retreat. So go to contractorcuts.com. You can inquire and we can talk about it, or there's also a sign up button. You can go ahead and get signed up for it. We'd love to see you there. If you're already in coaching, uh our executive levels and our growth levels come for free to the retreat. Um, we've got the workshop day also that we're tacking on now. Um, really cool to get signed up. Go to contractorcuts.com, get signed up. Also, set up a meeting. I'd love to talk with you. If you want to come to the retreat, you're just not ready for coaching. Perfect. Come to the retreat. Let's plan out your year next year. Let's get some processes in place and meet you where you're at right now to where we can help you grow to the next level. Yeah, let's meet you where you're at right now in Austin.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Perfect. That's the tagline,

Coaching Retreat Invite And Next Week

SPEAKER_02 35:10

dude.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

That's the tagline. That's a t-shirt. All right, next week we're talking good boss versus great boss. And we're talking more in the in the level of running labor and how you treat them and how you do things, less about like employees as PMs, but it's gonna be a really good one of what's what's a good boss versus a great boss. Um, I think it's gonna be killer. So tune in next week and we'll see you then. Bye.

unknown 35:33

Bye.