Starfish Coaching · Growing the Business
For design and construction business owners
Growing a construction business is mostly a matter of fixing things in the right order. First you need to know what you actually keep from each job. Then you need work that arrives without you chasing it, a team that can deliver that work without you standing over it, and a way of doing things that is written down. Many owners try them in the opposite order, which is why growth so often makes the business harder to run instead of easier.
Every business moves through four stages, and most of the pain of growing happens in the gap between the second and the fourth.
Lots of time, no work. The owner is a technician, not yet an operator, and often is not getting paid.
Lots of work, no time. Quality depends on the owner, who wears every hat and gets paid last.
A team is being built. The owner is learning to manage people and is torn between doing the work personally and leaning on staff.
The team runs on its own. Hats are delegated, systems hold the quality, the value of the business grows, and the owner is paid as a shareholder.
The gap between Stressed and Self-sustaining is a chasm, and working harder does not cross it. Stage two owners are already working as hard as it is possible to work. What crosses it is a different way of running the business, and the five steps below are that, in the order that tends to work.
Before you grow anything, find out your real margin. Revenue is not profit, and growth at a poor margin multiplies the problem. At a 6% net margin, an extra $100,000 of profit means finding about $1.67 million of new revenue, with the crews, risk and overhead that come with it. Put your own numbers into the overhead and profit calculator first.
If every lead needs you personally to chase it, you have built a job rather than a pipeline. The most reliable construction work comes from people who already know you: past clients, architects, designers and other trades. Ask for a review and a referral at the end of every job, keep in touch with past clients on a schedule, and make sure your website and Google profile show finished work.
Your first hires should take the heaviest load off you, usually estimating, project management or running the site. Write down what the role has to achieve before you look for anyone, hire for values as much as skill, and give every person a number they own so you can see trouble early. Delegate and elevate: the point of a hire is that you stop doing that job.
Quality that lives in your head cannot grow. Document the core process for each department, and the policies and procedures that let you step away. It does not need to be elegant. It needs to be written down, so that someone new can follow it.
Pick a few numbers that tell you how the business is doing, meet weekly to solve the problems that come up, and turn your vision into yearly, quarterly and weekly goals. This is the step that converts the other four into results, because it keeps the whole thing moving when you are not in the room.
These five steps are a path through eight fundamentals. The free scorecard scores all eight in about five minutes, and a low score on any one tells you where the next piece of work is.
Knowing your numbers takes a week. Building a source of work, a team and a written way of working takes quarters, and it is usually slower when the owner tries to do it in the gaps between jobs. That is the reason the Self-Sustaining Business Program exists. It builds all eight fundamentals into the business over 16 weeks, or 8 for owners who want to move faster, with hands-on implementation alongside the owner and the management team.
If the plan exists and what is missing is someone holding it, the Master Plan Program is the other route. And if you are wondering what either costs, the prices are published.
Eric also works with specific trades. See business coaching for general contractors, builders and the wider construction business coaching page.
Work in this order: know what you keep from each job, build a source of work that does not depend on you personally, hire the person who takes the biggest load off you, write down how work gets done, and run the business on a few numbers and a weekly rhythm. Growing before those are in place tends to make the business harder to run rather than easier.
The most reliable source of construction work is people who have already hired you or who work alongside you: past clients, architects, designers and other trades. Build a habit of asking for a review and a referral at the end of every job, keep in touch with past clients on a schedule, and make sure your website and Google profile show finished work and real reviews.
When delivery is the thing that ties you down. A useful test is whether jobs stall when you are not on site. If they do, the next hire is the person who can carry the site for you, and you should write down what good looks like for that role before you start looking.
Quality that depends on one person does not scale. Write down the core process for each department so it can be taught, give each person a number they own so you can see problems early, and meet weekly to solve the issues that come up. Quality then lives in the system rather than in the owner's head.
Chasing revenue before they know their margin. Extra work at a poor margin multiplies the problem, adds overhead and puts more strain on an owner who is already the bottleneck.
Not always. If you know your numbers and already have a team that carries work without you, you may not. A coach earns the fee when the owner is the constraint, when growth keeps making the business harder to run, and when you cannot see where the problem actually is.
The free scorecard scores your business across the eight fundamentals in about five minutes and shows you where growth is most likely to stall.
Eric Lee · Starfish Coaching · 1937 Triumph St, Vancouver BC V5T 1C5
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