668: Three Ways Contractors are putting their business at risk

I’m getting to a point in my coaching career where it can feel like I’m on a carousel. I meet heroic business owners all the time and it can feel like Groundhog Day, which was conveniently last week, as I hear some of the mistakes they are making. Many of them ask, “Thomas where are we at risk?”

I figured if I’m having that conversation with several business owners each week, so why not have it with all of you?

So thanks so much for joining today, it’s Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here ready to dive in on the 3 Ways contractors are putting their business at risk.

No, I’m not talking about dodging taxes or having poor quality, or failing to build team culture. Although those are important, I want to spend some time on the ones I see most frequently putting businesses at risk across the country.

The first one I want to talk about is this…not knowing how expenses affect your bottom line. I’ve talked about this in the past, but it rears its head all over the place, and here are a few areas I see it. 

Firstly, hiring. We look at industry standard instead of what the business can afford. It feels too intimidating to actually build out a Pro Forma and identify what happens to our cash flow when we hire, so we come up with a random number that is in no way based on our business's performance and we decide that we will just have to do more work. How much work? We have no clue, but we’ll know it when we see it. If other businesses can afford to pay it, then surely we can too! Sound familiar? 

Other areas I see it are in debt payments. We buy a truck or skid steer or scissor lift and don’t think through the ramifications of long-term debt payment. Or on the flip side, we need it for a few jobs and we go out and buy one instead of just renting it on the 3 jobs we need it and it really affects our cash position long term.

This is KILLING businesses every single day. We don’t forecast out our revenue and expenses in any kind of meaningful way, so we have to fly blind and we end up killing our potential profit downstream. 

So, what to do about that? Build out a reliable forecast with projected revenue, cost of goods, payroll, nonpayroll expenses, and any other random expenses that will pop up like insurance, tax payments…etc.

Build a running tally of projected Net Income and then use those numbers to tweak when adding expenses like hires or equipment purchases. Can you hit your numbers with the new expenses? If not, what does revenue need to be to hit those numbers? Is that realistic? It’s a game you have to play where every decision has a reaction. But you, the business owner, need to be on top of it.

The second way I see businesses at risk is not giving and writing down crystal clear job roles for their team.

It’s the area I see things get dropped more than any other. We have 4 people who have overlapping job roles and no understanding of where their responsibilities start and stop. So you, then, end up with 4 people doing things slightly different, or human nature takes over and they let the one person who truly cares handle the most important parts. That person then gets burned out as the weight of the business falls on their shoulders and they leave. 

This sound familiar? Absolutely it does! We expect people to know, mainly because we just wish they would take the initiative to figure it out for themselves, we expect people to know what we want them to do! And yet, it rarely works out for the better.

We have to build out an Organizational Chart that maps out responsibilities. And maybe it’s a great time for you to rebuild job roles to refine your operations instead of lean on the way you have always done it. Maybe it’s time to get in a mastermind group or ask a coach to walk alongside you and point out things you don’t see because you’re stuck in a rut!

Once you have the team mapped out, you may need to build a flow chart from Awareness of your business to closed sale and then see what are all of the tasks that need assigning. It takes time, but imagine how much clarity, authority, and purpose it would give your team to know exactly what it will be held responsible for and to be able to compensate on value to the business. Oh, it would be freeing for the whole team!

Lastly, I see businesses at risk in the way they don’t clearly articulate what will get them to their long-term vision. This may sound complex, but it’s not intended to be so. I see businesses chase after deals or projects that they have no reason to chase after because they don’t have a clearly identified plan to get to their vision. So they add a massive remodel or a new development, or maybe a completely out-of-the-blue maintenance division just to grow revenue.