Constructing Success: Building Businesses with Dominic Rubino

Prepare to sharpen your skills with a tool belt of knowledge, as we embark on an insightful journey with Dominic Rubino, a seasoned franchisee, franchisor, and construction expert. Dominic takes us through his incredible journey from building a franchise with the legendary Brian Tracy to starting a Christmas light business, revealing how he mastered the art of franchising and construction along the way. We also peel back the layers of Pure Green's ambition of achieving a target price per square foot of $100, sharing some practical tips on how to collaborate effectively with General Contractors to inch closer to that goal.

As we move deeper into our conversation, we address the heated debate between choosing local or national General Contractors (GCs) for franchise growth. Highlighting the importance of data collection and consistent project managers, we delve into the many factors that can influence this crucial decision. Dominic also highlights the significant role a turnkey approach can play in franchising and how to nurture relationships with millworkers. And as the dust settles, Dominic, the proud owner of 10x Built and host of two popular podcasts, shares his tried-and-true strategies to boost profitability in the construction industry. So strap in and get ready to construct your path to success with Dominic's wealth of knowledge and experience.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

All right, welcome to the Pure Green Podcast, and on today's show we have Dominic Rubino-Doc. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 2 0:09

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1 0:11

Good to see you, yeah. So let's kick things off just really quick. Tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 2 0:18

Well, I'll tell you. You know, there's so many things to tell about me. First, I'm a bad fly fisherman, like really bad, really really bad, but I still keep at it, you know, and all the things you would expect me to say. A husband and a father I love all that stuff. But from a franchise viewpoint, I've been a franchisee, I've been a franchisor, and so I've seen what works and what doesn't in that world. And then, with my background in construction and contracting, I thought that today you and I could talk about some of the ways that there's an overlay amongst those probably not fly fishing, but definitely construction and contracting and franchising.

Speaker 1 0:51

I love it. That sounds amazing. And before the the, we started a recording here. You were telling me a little bit about a connection to Brian Tracy. Can you, can you get into that? He's a legend and just self development. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 1:06

Yeah Well, and so for anybody who hasn't heard Brian Tracy, you really you've probably already quoted him. You know when. When people say quotes in business, you know what they always say, and then they follow some really awesome little quote. It's probably a Brian Tracy quote. The guy's been around forever. He is a legend, wonderful guy, by the way. So I became partners with Brian when he had started a franchise called Focal Point business coaching and he wanted to grow it, but you know he was busy doing his his things. So we took that over from him and I bought that when he had six unit franchisees and I built it up to 237 unit franchisees.

Speaker 1 1:41

Wow, that's tremendous. Yeah Well, I'll tell you be seven.

Speaker 2 1:47

Yeah, here's the secrets. You want to hear the secret story behind that. Yes, Brian Tracy is a great guy and when you see him on stage he's the same in the boardroom. But when that boardroom door is closed and you're not meeting your number or you're not doing what you said you're going to do, it gets a little dicey and he won't open that door. He doesn't let you back out.

Speaker 1 2:06

He'll make you eat that frog, right? That's one of the book titles, yeah.

Speaker 2 2:10

He makes you manufacture the frog and eat the frog and then eat the frog again, yeah, but he's a great leader. For that right, that high accountability, he's excellent yeah.

Speaker 1 2:18

I love it. I really want to pick your brain on the subject of construction, Just for our audience. Just really quick, give us the 20, 30 seconds. What makes you such an expert in the area of construction?

Speaker 2 2:32

Well, starting with the kitchen table I grew up at, or after that. After that, let's fast forward. Yeah, you know what I've always loved construction and contracting. As a matter of fact, my very first company that I ever started was called the Yohoho Light Co. I installed Christmas lights on people's houses, and keep in mind, I'm up in the Pacific Northwest, so we're talking about cedar shingles in the rain, with a staple gun and an aluminum ladder. It's amazing, I'm still alive. Amazing, I'm still alive. I read that Made $26.

Speaker 2 3:02

Yeah, that's right. The first year I made $26, but somehow I stuck with it, right? Well, I stuck with business, not that trade, and then I went into painting. Painting was my second trade business and that's actually where I got introduced to franchising. I bought a college painting franchise while I was in university and, to be honest, I didn't know it was a franchise until they asked me to sign some papers. But I did really well, I learned a ton, and so, anyways, construction and contracting has always followed me through and I just I like talking to contractors because there's no can I say BS? I won't use the full word, but that's fine. If they don't agree with me, they say they don't agree with me. If they do agree with me, they go do it. And I like people that take action and contractors take action.

Speaker 1 3:48

Awesome, awesome. So let me ask you this. So with Pure Green, we have over 100 locations that are either open or development. A lot of our franchisees are opening up their first location. They've never opened a location before. They're very green and we do a lot to support them in the construction process. We have construction management companies that can help guide them. But one of the pain points is that because we're open in 15 states, we're open in new states all the time.

Speaker 1 4:22

What we find is we have a target price per square foot. Our goal is just for getting the mill work, but just to white box the space. Our goal is $100 per square foot. Our average square footage is about 1000 square feet. It can range as small as 500 square feet up to 1200, 1300 square feet, but usually about 1000 square feet. So target $100 per square foot, $100k to a white box the space, but some areas it's crazy. There's certain cities, certain states. Just the bids we get from contractors come in very high and we have to negotiate. So I'd love to get some tips, tricks, hacks what's the best way to do the bidding with the GCs, how many GCs should our franchisees be getting and what's the best way to really work through it with them to get as close to our target numbers possible.

Speaker 2 5:18

Yeah, you have such an interest, so it's an exciting business model. I did my research. I love it. I love everything about it. It's healthy, it's got a small footprint, high profitability. It's what it needs to be moving into the future. That's how food should be.

Speaker 2 5:31

So now we start to look at how do we build this, and the most expensive part of construction is the stuff that doesn't get done, because every day you're not open is a day you're losing money, and I've got no skin in the game of your franchise. This is business. If I'm not open, I'm losing money. So sometimes looking at the cheapest bid is not the right way to go. Now that doesn't mean we should go for the most expensive one either, and there's options in this world. We live in a new future where the local mill worker might not be the best mill worker for you, or they might. You're going to have to figure that out. But really it's all going to come down to communication and asking a ton of questions and staying in really high communication with people. Now, on top of that and I don't know if I added I didn't add this to my background, but as you know, I host two different podcasts in the trades construction space.

Speaker 2 6:25

One of them is called Profit Tool Belt. That's for all of the GCs you'd have on site the HVAC guys, the flooring guys, the painting, the drywall, the suspended ceilings, that's all that stuff, right? The other podcast and folks listen carefully to the name of this and see if you can guess who I talked to on that podcast it's called the Cabinet Maker Profit System podcast. So all that mill work you're talking about, that's my audience on that podcast and I know things about that industry and what I know is they worry about competition out of state.

Speaker 2 6:58

Think about a location and we'll use one that's easy for everybody to understand New York. Now think Manhattan, right, if you're on the East Coast, that's good. If you're on the West Coast, I want you to think about Silicon Valley and everybody's rolling their eyes and like, oh my God, I've heard about real estate prices in Silicon Valley. Well, if you're in the Silicon Valley or if you're in Manhattan and you try to get a cabinet maker, a mill worker in Manhattan or Silicon Valley to make your mill work, their cost base is going to be based on the real estate they're in. Why not look one state over? Why not look a couple hundred miles away somebody who's got to truck it in and your GC. Your contractor should be able to walk you through that.

Speaker 1 7:39

Talk to me more about the the GCE side of it. So we're open up a store, right yeah, and let's just say it's a pretty decent condition. Let's just say it was a former retail shop but we got to build it to spec. We get, we and we're going to get bids from the general contractors you mentioned, like it's all about communication, asking the right questions. What questions should the franchisee be asking the GCE? How should the franchisee determine if it's a good GCE?

Speaker 2 8:09

Well, again, doing your due diligence, the same as we do anywhere. Go find out who else the GCE built for and talk to those people and if they won't share those names with you, go find it out or eliminate that GCE from the list. First and foremost, I want to have really good communication with whoever I'm working with, and here's what I know about the GCEs who listen to my show. They want customers who communicate clearly, who have solid plans, who don't make a ton of change orders right For the franchisees. Listening to this. If the franchise or if Ross says this is the system, this is how to build a winning store. Build that store. Don't get fancy. Do what the system says. Use that to inform the GCE. Make sure the GCE is following that. Everybody uses that as a central document. You're going to have a winning store. Was it too simple?

Speaker 1 8:56

No, I like that, that's it right, I like it. So that's great. But I want to go deeper. I want to get a little deeper here. Let's say we got five GCEs right and they're all, let's just say, ranging from $100 a square foot to $150 a square foot, but we like some of the guys who are on the higher side. How do we get them down? How do we talk them down? How do we get them more competitive?

Speaker 2 9:22

So first of all, you should be cautious of anybody that comes in too low because something's missing, right? Let's say you've got four bids and three of them come in pretty close to each other and, just to keep it simple, all the three that are close together are within 10,000 of each other, but you've got one GCE who's like 25,000 less. You either have to go back to that GCE and say I think you missed something. If you're interested in this job, please look at the plans again, because you're off the mark from the other guys. You don't have to tell them anything, just say look, if you really want this job, I'm worried you missed something.

Speaker 2 9:58

Now some people out there might be saying well, if he missed it, that's his problem, I don't care, it's coming in 25 grand cheaper. Well, let me tell you something. He's running a business too, and if he's losing money coming in 25 grand cheaper, where is he going to pass that onto? He's going to take shortcuts, he's going to change your materials or he's going to walk away from the job when he finds out he's underwater and can't finish. And I go back to my opening statement the worst purchase in construction is a job that doesn't get done. So you have to be really cautious about the low guy. So if we cleared off the low guy from that mix out of the four, yeah, so now we've got the three guys that are tight, close together.

Speaker 2 10:40

So what do we do about the guys that are close together? You want to go and you want to level that. You want to talk to all three of them again and say, look, you guys are all in the same range. Can you tell me why you guys came in the same? Have that conversation with them, if you, and then ask them this if you had to look at my job, you probably already see where there's waste or opportunities for improvement. How could we make this job better and just have the conversation with the guys?

Speaker 2 11:03

I will tell you that through that process, you're probably going to want to go with the guy who I keep saying guy, but GC. You're going to want to go with the GC who communicates the best and shows you. They have systems, there's a predictability to their communication. They have paperwork, they have forms, they have a way to communicate with you. They, if they say they're going to talk to you Tuesday at 10, they talk to you Tuesday at 10, not sometime Tuesday Watch for the little indicators, because how they do business now is how they're going to do business later.

Speaker 1 11:35

That's helpful. That's helpful. Let's flip the conversation a little bit to more on the franchise Zor side. As a franchise Zor and really building the system for scalability and to really help our franchise, you save as much money as possible. A lot of Zors out there we call franchise Zor, Zors, Zors, yeah.

Speaker 2 11:58

Zors and Zs.

Choosing Local or National GCs for Franchise Growth

Speaker 1 11:59

A lot of Zors out there. They use the same GC, like one of these national general contractors that can do work all over the country and typically send their crews to the different states, but it's the same company. I'm curious to know for a growing franchise, zor, what's your thought process on using local GCs versus using a national GCs? What are some of the pros and cons? Yeah, I mean let's start.

Speaker 2 12:28

That's a really good question because I don't think there's one answer to it. I think you have to find out by testing and measuring and let the data be your guide, Let that you're going to have some measurements there. But I would say that let's say you've got a large national general contractor who can put a team together in any state, in any city, anywhere. You really want to understand the project managers, then right, let's just say you're in Arizona and you're in Phoenix. If it's a big GC like that, they've got two or three different project managers. As you've probably already found out, not all those project managers are the same. You might want to say on our projects we only want Jennifer or George. The reason for that is we've trained Jennifer and Jennifer knows our system, our communications, our everything. Jennifer's our prime project manager inside your national general contractor for installations in Phoenix. That would be my suggestion.

Speaker 2 13:28

A franchise exists because of the beauty of the simple systems of consistency. Turnkey is turnkey right. So we wanna have that turnkey approach, we wanna do that same thing. So that's what I would do on a national side is I would try to find project managers who I could work really well with and train, if you will, on how we do things, and I would understand from them how they do things at their company. I gotta tell you in my head right now I'm trying so hard not to say the name of the GC, because I deal with so many of these national guys, so I don't wanna use one as an example, but yeah, so you're saying, if you're using one of these big national guys, there's a great project manager, because you request that project manager for every franchise unit in the system.

Speaker 1 14:16

You think that the national GC route could be a fit for brands that are emerging and that are blowing past 100 units, 200 units. You think that that could be a viable route.

Speaker 2 14:29

Yeah, absolutely. Now you're gonna say, well, we don't have a Jennifer in Phoenix because we don't have a location in Phoenix. But all of the PMs think about the organization of a large company. All of those project managers report up to, let's say, a regional, maybe a state, project manager, and that state project manager reports up to a, let's just say, a national project manager. So you might have to build that relationship first with the national project manager, who then would pass their directions onto the local project manager. Does that make sense? Because you don't know that you're gonna be building in Phoenix or you don't have a location there.

Speaker 1 15:06

I'm picking random locations, but if you follow what I mean there Is in your experience, like is it possible for one of these national, these large national GCs, to be very competitive across the board in most of the states?

Speaker 2 15:20

Absolutely. Yeah the same with millwork right. There are a thousand millwork shops out there that are dying for a franchise brand to give them consistent work that they could plug into the CNC, that their team is trained on, that they know how to ship for that they know how to price. It's a dream job. For a lot of millworkers it's a dream job.

Speaker 1 15:43

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I saw the smile on your face there. Yeah, no, no, we already have that well dialed in. So, apson, you're 100% right. Very competitive space, Everyone wants that business. That is like the dream work. To work with a big franchise or, and to just put you know, plug it in the CNS and just plug and play, and that is absolutely.

Speaker 2 16:05

And build a relationship right, because in five years you're gonna need to rebrand, in 10 years you're gonna need and you do. You need to rebrand because the customers demand it and so if you've got that system, you've got that working relationship. It's such a smooth transition.

Speaker 1 16:19

So let's say you were building your own, you were the franchise war, and let's say you had 100 units in your system. How would you design the whole construction process? What would you outsource? What would you do in-house? How would you design everything from? Would you have your own corporate team who does all you know, does the initial plans, the initial one-page schematics, and then you can add off to the architect? Would you outsource the architect? Would you use a national architect? Would you go local? And then what would you do with the contractor? Would you use a national GC and would you require it with your franchise? Talk to me about if you were just building your own franchise. How would you structure it?

Speaker 2 17:01

Yeah, so if I started from scratch, like absolutely from scratch. So let's say I've got a Delaware corporation incorporated in somewhere else. So just pick Oregon as an example, because it's pretty or no. Let's pick Colorado. Let's pick Colorado. I started in Colorado. Well, my first location, whether it's corporate owned or franchise owned, I'm going to be using local guys, because I'm not going to I'm not even going to know what I need out of a national player. It's like anything you start small and you evolve. So I would start in Colorado by finding somebody who has the chops to be able to deliver what I need. So I need a design build contractor. I need the right architect or designer. I probably need to have some real estate connections so that we have parameters for what our real estate is. So all of those things come together. Once I have that all laid out, I want to have a building scope and a building plan laid out and, as a franchise, we like simple systems, we like repeatability. So all of this would be accompanied with visuals and I'm not sure if you guys call them franchise manuals or SOPs, but it has to follow that system that we can plug and play those people into. But I also want to remember that I've got plans.

Speaker 2 18:10

The franchise that I grew to 237 locations did not start at 237 locations. Started with six, six and from six I had to think what would we look like at 25 locations, which was a stretch. But I remember walking into my executive meeting when we were around 19 franchisees and I said, guys, we have to aim for 50. And people around the table actually put their hands in their hair. They're like come on, man, we're aiming for 25. And now you want 50? I'm like, yeah, because now we have to start thinking like we're a 50 unit franchise, because we're no longer a six. We've already proven what we could be 19. We're on the way to 25. We've got to aim for 50 now. So you change the type of vendors or the relationship with those vendors. Maybe now you start to look not at national GCs but regional GCs. So you just you grow as you go.

Speaker 1 19:02

So, dom, let me ask you this let's, let's flip things around. Now I'm talking more about you. So you, you host a couple podcasts, sold, sold a bunch of businesses. You're reading some books, so what's what's next for you?

Retirement and Building Business Success

Speaker 2 19:18

What are you working on, you looking for? Yeah, that's, that's good. So my, my wife said are you ever retired? And I thought I don't know how. Hey Ross, I have no idea how to retire. I just I would keep going because I love what I do. I'm I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world. I get to do what I love doing, I get to run businesses and as a business coach, I get to help others run businesses. So right now I've got a team of business coaches that I'm building under.

Speaker 2 19:42

Well, you can see this brand here 10x built, right, 10 times your building company is what 10x built stands for. That's not a sandwich order. Somebody thought built was BLT's. That stands for 10x your building company. Right, I'm going to continue to grow that. We've got a number of coaches on my team. We support people in in construction trades and we show them how to get their businesses profitable. We show them how to get their business to the place where a franchise or like you would come knocking on the door and say we want to use you as the GC, want to use you as your HVAC guy, we want to use you for all of our countertops, etc.

Speaker 1 20:18

Awesome and tell our listeners where they can learn more about you. Give them a. This is your chance to just plug everything.

Speaker 2 20:27

Sure Well you know, the days of social media are this. If you can't find me, you're really not looking, so connect with me on LinkedIn If you have questions. My name is Dominic Rubino, but you can also listen to the podcasts. There's two of them. One's called Profit Tool Belt and the other one is a long one. It's called Cabinet Maker Profit System. So on both of those shows we talk about the business of the construction business. It's all about how to make money doing what you love and being proud of what you produce as a business owner in construction.

Speaker 1 20:59

Awesome, that was great. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show. This was great Pleasure having you.

Speaker 2 21:05

Yeah, good luck to all your franchisees as they launch and as they're running. Thanks, ross, awesome.