Each is defined by how you get out of bed in the morning.
If you get out of bed and your first business thought is which site you need to get to, you have a job.
If you get out of bed and your first business thought is how you are going to make your organization more efficient or less dependent on you, you have a business.
To succeed in your business: 1)Â decide what is important for you and your business to accomplish; 2)Â figure out the steps necessary to accomplish those goals; and then, 3)Â focus on only those things.
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There are many steps that have to be taken, the first of which is setting your company up for growth.
From there, you plan, then you organize, and then you execute.
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Learn what it takes to run a construction business well.
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But it doesn’t work that way.
You still have to do the hard work of building a brand and a reputation, of being first in your chosen market segment…and then constantly reminding your market who you are.
Being great isn’t enough. Your market has to believe in your greatness.
It has to be right.
All of the effort that you have made in developing your construction knowledge, crafting the right marketing message, setting up a client-centric business, building a knowledgeable crew of subcontractors, and a hundred other tasks will mean nothing if you can’t produce a timely, comprehensive and professional estimate.
You must make it easy for them to go through the process with you.
By creating a map of the steps they will be going through and explaining each step to them, you will ensure that they are comfortable with the process… and with you.
Do your buyer and your business a favor by planning out the process and being ready to answer the questions you know they are going to ask.
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One of the first things you will learn in running a business is that, no matter how hard you work at making the client relationship run smoothly, the client-builder interface is not always friendly. Recognizing that, it is important to be prepared for the possibility of problems.
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Discover what it takes to get and keep everyone on the same quality and performance track.
For most of us, it is where we actually cut our construction teeth.
Believe it or not, that is a problem.
The urge to “just do it myself” constantly gets in the way of running your construction business like a business.
The business-oriented approach to job-site production is to develop a system, a method, an action plan for doing the work that must be done on a job-site, delegate that work…and then direct the performance.
Accounting provides such a method.
Further, you will use the historical numbers to make your future numbers more accurate. Using reliable numbers to generate new proposals and estimates can help you avoid under-bidding a job (and losing money) or over-bidding a job (and losing work).
Neither outcome is sustainable.
From ratio-analysis to decision-modeling, this section is where you learn to look into the future based on where your business has been in the past.
You'll take the good and the bad performances of the past and learn from them to develop early-warning systems for future performance.
You can link to the actual platforms and there are courses available showing how I use these efficient and effective tools.