Construction and Contracting Business. Entrepreneur magazine
stirring speeches than it is about the ability to convey enthusiasm and energy to both employees and clients. With the emergence of the internet, email, cellphones, and voicemail, we have become more impersonal than at any time in recent memory. Thus, in the modern world, possessing good people skills is of greater importance to the entrepreneur. Not only must the contractor be able to accurately share his or her corporate vision to fellow workers but he or she must also be able to convey enthusiasm, professionalism, and sincerity to clients.
Communicating with employees starts with hiring the right people for the job. Good hiring is a result of being able to put yourself in another person’s shoes and see what they see, feel what they feel, and have sensitivity to their expectations. Upon hiring the right people, good communication means having the ability to motivate the new employees to succeed beyond their dreams, pushing them to their creative limits, and then recognizing their achievements. It also means respecting and utilizing the knowledge, wisdom, and practical experiences of the seasoned employees.
Communicating with clients follows a similar path. The ability to sell your service or product requires that you be able to sit in their chairs, understand their problems, and focus on their dreams.
It’s imperative that you remember good communication is not only about what you have to say or how enthusiastic you are, it is very much about how well you listen.
Not every entrepreneur possesses all of the traits mentioned in PANIC. Not everyone is a good communicator, not all have excellent natural ability. But to succeed, you must recognize both your strengths and weaknesses. When you do this, you will have the ability to hire people who are strong in areas you are weak. The combination of talent within a company creates a stronger and more powerful entity.
With all due respect to professional baseball, professional basketball, and NASCAR fans, most polls indicate that professional football holds the top spot as America’s favorite sport. Football is a very complex business requiring the expertise of dozens of people in each organization. Gone are the days of Vince Lombardi and George Halas who controlled entire football operations with only a handful of assistants. Today, most teams separate the head coach and general manager positions, and it is not unusual to have 16 or 17 assistant coaches on the staff. The salary cap and player contracts are so complex that only a team of lawyers can understand them. Running a business is much like coaching a football team. The head football coach oversees both the offense and the defense; assistants manage the details of each. In order to win, both offense and defense have to play extremely well.
The offensive squad of a business includes the marketing department, sales force, and the bidding and estimating departments. Depending on the size of the company, landing a $40,000 or $200,000 job can be compared to a quarterback throwing a long touchdown pass; but the business “offense” still needs to book $500 and $5,000 jobs, just like the offense needs to gain a few yards at a time to get a first down. For the business, the “defense” is made up of those who manage the finances of the company. If they are not successful, the game gets out of hand, and success (victory) is impossible. A football team may have an excellent offense, but if its defense is weak, it will likely lose more games than it wins. Likewise, you may have many jobs and plenty of income, but you may not be playing defense and protecting that income. A team may score 35 points, but if they give up 40 points, they lose. If you bring in $1.2 million and spend $1.8 million, you will also lose.
Just as teams may have a few losing season, so will you, but you can only last so long in businesses without winning. That’s why you need to have both offense and defense, making money and protecting enough money that you show a profit.
If you are not sure how this works then go back and read Chapter 7, study contribution margin, and understand what the offense must do if the defense overspends the budget.
Just consider recent winners of the Super Bowl, football’s world championship contest. They have almost always had the better defense. Look at many of the great teams of their day—the Packers, Steelers, 49ers, and more recently the Denver Broncos; even though they had great quarterbacks like Brett Favre, Ben Rothlisberger, and Payton Manning, they featured exceptional defensive teams. And they all won lots of games—and Super Bowls.
Release all your creativity and passion with your offensive plan, but be stubborn and watchful with your defensive scheme. Teamwork wins when players on both sides of the ball do their part.
As this book concludes, your new life begins.
“The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best doing it.”
—DEBBI FIELDS, FOUNDER OF MRS. FIELDS COOKIES
Construction Contracting Resources
They say you can never be rich enough or young enough. While these could be argued, we believe you can never have enough resources. Therefore, we present for your consideration a wealth of sources for you to check into, check out, and harness for your own personal information blitz.
These sources are tidbits, ideas to get you started on your research. They are by no means the only sources out there, and they should not be taken as the ultimate answer. Research has been done on each company, but businesses do tend to move, change, fold, and expand. Please do your homework carefully, and then get out and start investigating.
Architectural Graphic Standards for Residential Construction by American Institute of Architects, Nina M. Giglio and Dennis Hall (Wiley, 2010).
Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee (St. Martin Press, 2005).
DeWALT Construction Estimating Complete Handbook (DEWALT Series) by Adam Ding and the American Contractors Educational Services (DEWALT, 2016).
The General Contractor: How to Be a Great Success or Failure by Joe Egan (Egan Publications, 2012).
The Only Three Questions That Still Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don’t by Ken Fisher (Wiley, 2012).
Running a Successful Construction Company by David Gerstel (Taunton Press, 2002).
Start Your Own Business by The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. (Entrepreneur Press, 2015).
Construction, Remodeling, and General Contractor Magazine Websites
Constructor, www.constructormagazine.com
Engineering News-Record, www.enr.com
Free Trade Magazines, www.freetrademagazines.com
Modern Contractor Solutions, www.mcsmag.com
Remodeling, www.remodeling.hw.net
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) Group