The Key To Construction Business Success
There’s a big difference between working a job and running a business. What are you doing?
Are you struggling to take your home services or construction business to the next level?
There’s a big key concept that many contractors miss out on. A light bulb moment.
There’s a mindset that helps to take a series of small jobs here and there and turns them into a profitable, successful business.
What Our Most Successful Contractors Have Done
Footbridge Media has been helping contractors just like you for 20+ years - including busienss development and contractor marketing.
And we’ve seen a lot of contractors come and go during that time.
We’ve noticed a trend with those contractors and home service providers that always perform the best with us. It can be a difficult hump to get over - but when you can do it, it can be the key difference in making your business better.
The key here to construction business success is to take yourself out of the trenches as soon as you can.
This is a hard one for many contractors to do - and it’s not the right choice for every single person out there.
Some people love to be in the mess, in the work, with a pressure washing wand or paint brush or voltmeter or pipe wrench or hammer in hand. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But if you’re out there, spending the hours doing the actual work – you’re likely not spending hours making your business grow.
The Two Big Options For Construction & Home Service Business Owners
You have two options here.
- You can be perfectly content and happy with your work and lead flow as it is. You may not have consistency in your work hours or project count, but if you’re happiest while working your trade - that may be an option for you.
- You can take a step away from the tools and get yourself working on your business. This is much easier to do when you have support to help you.
Let’s talk about how you can build up your business success with a little help, with the goal of getting you out of the daily grind with each customer and more into the grind of growing your business.
Finding Experts To Support Your Business
At the very beginning of your business journey, you’ll likely to be the only employee. That means you’re in charge of everything. You’re going to quickly find out that you’re not an expert at a lot of things - and that you will do things way slower with you doing it compared to when someone who already knows what they’re doing.
Finding experts that fit your business needs and budget is essential to growing your business.
To start off, you don’t have to hire in-house staff for every part of your business.
Financial & Legal Assistance - Leave It To The Pros
For newer or smaller businesses, your financial management and legal management are definitely part of your business operations that can and should be outsourced to accountants and attorneys who know what they are doing - so that your company can be properly established, managed, and protected.
Business Development & Marketing - The Value Of Niche Experience
When it comes to business development - gaining the exposure your company needs, and completing strategic planning and marketing for your business - finding an outside expert to help you is critical.
You likely shouldn’t pick the most expensive option or the cheapest option - the right answer for most contractors and home service providers is in the middle there.
Finding a pro that has experience in marketing and business development in your niche is important.
Every business type and industry works differently.
When you find a business coach or marketing agency with experience in the exact service you offer, you get the benefit of that experience.
What does that mean?
Any marketing agency can theoretically work with any type of business. Overall, big-picture marketing strategies and concepts guide most of the industry. But, it takes research to understand a specific marketplace and develop the right balance of tactics to be effective.
Like, you can’t take the same branding marketing playbook from Amazon and apply that to a handyman in Whitefish, Montana. That just wouldn’t work.
With the right marketing agency with the right niche experience, they’ll already know how your industry works, have an understanding of your operations, and get what makes your customer tick.
With the right marketing agency comes processes, systems, and structure so that you can have a game plan for how your business is going to run. You’ll have goals that you’re striving to achieve.
Experts Don't Require Your Management - They Require Your Collaboration
Now - for your financial and legal expert and for your marketing expert - those are folks that you’ll likely find between your own research and review and perhaps recommendation. Those are business relationships that you can more or less handle entirely externally.
That’s to say that you’ll work with them, and you’ll provide them with the access, information, or materials that they ask for so that they can handle most of the heavy lifting.
There is collaboration and partnership, but you don’t necessarily have to worry about managing them…if anything, they should be trying to manage you to keep you on task.
Finding The Right People To Deliver Your Service
When it comes to finding the right people to have as boots on the ground to build your team of service and construction professionals, that’s a different story.
Finding local talent has been notoriously difficult for contractors in recent times. Lately, the trend has been less about trying to find the best-skilled people in your industry. Experience is great, but finding the type of person that is right for your business and for the job is harder.
Find people with strong work ethics and mold them into the service technician or the employee your business needs.
The Only Way To Get More Time To Work On Your Business Is Partnership
No matter the difficulty, the only way that you can have more time to work on your business is to utilize experts and to find the right people to join your team to deliver on the service end of your company.
The key is to find the right partners and team members who have the right skills and attitude. It’s the companies and people that support the structure of your business that will free you up. Free you up to work less on a job and more on building your business.
If you need help building your business, the team at Footbridge Media is always here to help. Just like the thousands of contractors who have trusted us over the past 20+ years, Footbridge Media can be your partner as a contractor marketing agency.
About Chris Lonergan
Chris Lonergan has over 12 years of contractor marketing experience with Footbridge Media. With a background in web design, print design, content creation, and online marketing, Chris is focused on providing quality marketing and business solutions in the construction and service industries - helping small business owners to more efficiently manage their companies and grow their operations.
Chris Lonergan has previously contributed to and/or been featured in PM Magazine (Plumbing & Mechanical | Contractors x Engineers), theNEWS (ACHR - Air Conditioning | Heating | Refrigeration), Service Roundtable's blog, inPAINT Magazine, the SMB Marketing Agency Show, and the Green Industry Podcast. Chris is also a past SGI/CertainPath breakout session presenter.
