We survived another presidential election. Depending on how involved you got, it lasted between three months or three years but it’s finally behind us.
If your team won, you’re a happy camper, hopeful that good things are coming your way according to the politicians. If your team lost, you’re either indifferent or completely depressed. Regardless of how your team did, as a business owner you need to keep one thing in mind; you have a business to run and a family to take care of.
So, let’s take a minute and review your mindset.
I’m a firm believer that voting is important, and we need to be intelligent, thoughtful voters. But getting overly excited or incredibly depressed over an election is a sign that you’re distracted from what matters most. Becoming emotionally involved in something you can’t control takes your focus away from what you can control: your business.
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Running a business, especially a construction-related business, requires focus. It’s good to feel involved in elections and to care about what happens in our country. It’s not good to make it the focus of your life.
Okay, Grandpa Michael, where should my focus be? Your family and your business. For your business, you need a long-term plan, broken into doable pieces that can be done a little each day to keep you, your employees, and your company on the path to making a profit.
I heard recently from a contractor who was told he should spend more time working on the jobs. A specialty contractor told him he wouldn’t make any money dressed as he was (shirt and slacks) when he stopped to check on a job. If you’ve read Markup and Profit Revisited, you know otherwise.
Here is the thing that those contractors are missing, and this is especially important for new contractors to realize.
When you’re working on the jobs, you can only work on one or two jobs at a time and you’ll only see a profit from those one or two jobs. Hopefully, you’re paying yourself an hourly wage for your time working on those jobs, although most don’t. An hourly wage for working on jobs is different from the fixed salary for owning and running the company. These are two different issues.
When you’re working on jobs, you’re taking time away from promoting and selling future jobs. Your focus is getting that job built, not the future. You aren’t running your business, you’re an employee at your own company.
If you focus on being the business owner, managing employees or subs and selling to your potential, you can have anywhere from four to a dozen jobs running at the same time, and you’ll make a profit from each of those jobs. Which scenario is more profitable? Owning and running the company is by far the best way to go.
I understand that some don’t want the added stress or workload of running multiple jobs at one time, or you really prefer having your hands in the work. That’s fine, it’s a lifestyle choice, as long as you realize that you’re foregoing profitability for a smaller business.
This is the best time of year to review where you and your business are and where you want to go. Set aside the distractions and focus on your business. We’re about to wrap up the year and head into a new one, you want to be ready.
We have two papers on our website and an online class available to help you with your year-end planning. These papers and the class take you step-by-step through the process of reviewing the current year and making plans for next year. This is work; it requires time, energy, focus, and input from you and those around you.
It’s not easy. Done right, you can’t do it in a few days. You’ll work on it a little at a time while you think through what’s worked well and what hasn’t. Pondering takes time. If you want to make your plans a reality, you must figure out where you’ve been and why. You can then make plans, set goals, and know you have a map to reach those goals.
Every year we hear from contractors who met or exceeded their goals by the following fall. They’re able to do that because they made a plan for their business, then followed that plan to succeed. Their success wasn’t a coincidence, it was a result of their hard work.
We’d love to hear stories of success from all of you next year. Actions have consequences. Inaction has consequences. Go, read the papers or watch the class, do the work, and let us know how it goes.
The knowledge and experience Michael Stone gained in his 60+ years in construction has helped thousands of contractors improve their businesses and their lives. He is the author of the books Markup & Profit Revisited, Profitable Sales, and Estimating Construction Profitably, and is available for one-on-one consultations.
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