Ep. 45 - Your Questions Answered: Blue-Collar Business Growth and Hard Truths

This week on the Blue Collar Business Podcast, I’m bringing you something a little different—a live Q&A session straight from TikTok and YouTube. I took your real, raw questions and gave honest answers based on what I’ve lived and learned in the trenches. We hit on everything from scaling family-run excavation businesses to figuring out margins, systems, and when it’s time to get out of the machine and into the office.

If you’re maxed out on labor but still hungry to grow, I break down how to lean on inside accounting, use your P&Ls to make smart calls, and build training systems that let you step back without losing control. We also get into bidding commercial jobs, navigating that jump from residential, and using tools like PlanSwift to help you compete and win in this space.

I opened up about some of the tough stuff too—like communicating with your spouse when the business grind starts to weigh on your home life. It's not easy, but if you’re building something that matters, those conversations matter just as much as any estimate or invoice.

This episode is packed with the kind of blue-collar business advice I wish I had years ago. It’s gritty, it’s real, and it’s all about helping you find clarity in the chaos. If you missed the live, here’s your shot to catch up—and if you’ve got questions of your own, send ‘em in at bluecollarbusinesspodcast.com.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Blue Collar Business Podcast
• 3:03 Scaling a Family Landscaping Business
• 7:12 Bidding Commercial Work Strategy
• 14:38 Determining Appropriate Project Margins
• 20:24 Making Time for Strategic Planning
• 22:30 Balancing Business and Family Life
• 27:50 Episode Wrap-Up and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, cy Kirby, and I want to help you in what it took me trial and error and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back, guys, to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast brought to you and sponsored today by podcastvideoscom and all their team here. We've been aligned with them, had the show over here for a little over a year and the things they're doing with this platform I'm really excited about, and we have got some crazy guests coming here in the next and some events that we're announcing, and so stay tuned. But this week's episode definitely a little different. I did a live stream last week trying to answer some questions and a live stream, basically platform. I think we were live on Tik TOK and we were live on YouTube. Uh, apologies if you missed that one, but go ahead and send in your questions into the website wwwbluecollarbusinesspodcastcom and get those questions in and hopefully I'll get them answered on this next live stream. So be checking out our TikTok and our socials to find out when the next live stream is. And or YouTube. We were also there and you guys can jump on and hopefully we can answer some questions for you guys. So I can't tell you guys how much the support means to me, this idea that came out of nowhere and this resource that we have tried to create as we're all learning. So I hope this has been a helpful tool and resource every week through over this last year. And happy July 4th I know we just came through that holiday, so hope you guys have had a great weekend through July 4th holiday, middle of the year, and we've got a long six months ahead of us. Guys, it's been a little brutal in my neck of the woods, as you may hear in my tone of voice, but doing what you can to keep on moving. But had some switch-ups where I'm at with PsyCon and doing a little bit more than just transitions. So here's a live stream from last week. Guys, I appreciate your support. I appreciate every one of you that's reached out and shared your insight. It means more than you know.

Speaker 1: 2:55

I'm going to roll on here to this next question from Spencer from Florida. Hit us with if you run a family-grown landscaping and excavation business with strong local momentum, how do you decide whether it's time to scale further, especially when labor is maxed out and you're still handling most of the heavy equipment work yourself? Let me kind of paraphrase that for you, spencer if you run a question is, if you run a family grown landscaping excavation business so essentially I'm assuming there's a couple of family members running this together um, with strong local momentum, how do you decide whether it's time to scale further, especially when labor is maxed out and you're still handling most of the heavy equipment work yourself? I don't know if he means by heavy equipment work like as in, he's actually out there operating or. Hey, thanks for that, follow my guy. I'm going to try and hit all of these through this process as well.

Speaker 1: 3:58

But literally, if I'm going to go back to inside accounting, if you were sitting there and you're inside accounting and your reporting is telling you and you're getting a P&L and a balance sheet and I know that sounds super high level, spencer, at this point, because I was a family owned and operated business still am I understand and sympathize working with family, because it's different, for sure. But at the same time, if you're in the machine all the time, I would concentrate more on a training and onboarding process for your operators so you can get yourself out of the machine, because that right there you cannot work in the business while working on the business. There's no way to do it. I speak about it on the show all the time. It's too hard. One area is going to have slack and lose momentum and it doesn't sound like that's what you guys are looking for. You're looking to keep your momentum going here, but there's not a real sweet spot, point of oh, this is the time to do it.

Speaker 1: 5:10

But if you're watching your inside accounting reporting which I haven't always been the best at either and we've really focused on that over last year, especially through the election year things got very hard to deal with from all aspects and variables, but essentially we focused up on inside accounting and then this year we have been pushing even more and I can tell you the difference of me having consistent, accurate reporting, what it can do for your business, especially as the owner, because it's like taking a test but not really ever having the answer key right and me and my estimator were talking about that because he's sitting there from the front of the house. We've been so much work We've been dragging through this year too. I mean, this year hasn't been an overabundance from the residual of last year and we're waiting for work to just absolutely pile, drive us and turn on and hit Spixen 2. There's no doubt. But we need that data from the production side to basically give him that answer key to find out if these jobs are staying unprofitable. Is he estimating right from the get-go Jobs are staying unprofitable? Is he estimating right from the get-go or were we taking a bad number and trying to go make it a good number out in the field?

Speaker 1: 6:32

Because you cannot take a bad number off the desk and try and go make it a good number but that sweet spot, I would tell you, is number one. You need to focus on systems and processes and procedures because if you're still out there, I'm telling this to myself five years ago I was in that machine still at the same time process, implementation and execution of what we're doing every day, so that somebody else that hops in the seat can just pick up and run with it, because nobody's going to sit there and take this out of your head. Unless you stick it on paper, they'll never be successful. They're always just trying to read your mind right. So it's very hard for an employer to hire another guy and stick them in that operator seat and go. Well, you know that guy right there. He's not doing it the way I would do it, or his production is not as much as I would do, et cetera, et cetera. Well, he's never going to be.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Look up the book, buy back your time. A shout out to T-Dog T-Money, old Trent Harris over at Boot Caller. He says I say things out of that book all the time. It's on my ad list, but 80% of your time? Okay, if you can do something 100% effectively, if somebody's out there giving 80% of what you can output as an owner of a business, I'm telling you you better be thanking them because they're doing everything they can. The 20% they don't even have knowledge of because you haven't shared with them out of your head yet. Trust me, I know I've done it and the more transparent you get with your team I know I may be going a little far off here from your question here, spencer, but the more transparent you build with your team, the better success chance that they have.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Whether it's good, bad or indifferent. It may not be good, it may, you know, financials may be rough and you may be going through a downtime and um, but you got a band together and everybody's got to see where we're going as a, as a target goal. So I would get your family together, look at your P and L and balance sheet together. Hey, are we? Um man, we're getting an influx in landscape, hardscape projects. Maybe we don't go by the 285 skid steer, but maybe we um go buy another dingo to make the labor side of it um a little bit easier. On the labor that say, we got four or five guys out there. If we can have a piece of equipment, help and have two or three guys out there, that's kind of the things I'd be looking for to start elevating.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Number one thing is sales and keep sales coming in. I know you say momentum, but before you start scaling you better have consistent month over month over sales and conversion rates to look at. I didn't do that. I had consistent sales, but I didn't have the conversion rates to sit there and look at when I was scaling. I took a big risk and you can do that too, I mean you absolutely can If you've built a little bit of reputation around. I would definitely give it two or three years and set up these processes and systems and get your inside accounting to where it's spitting out reports every 30, 45 days so you can make a good judgment call and those reports said all that to say. Those reports will tell you when it's, give you a good inclination of when it's time to scale.

Speaker 1: 9:57

There's also a lot to be said to being an entrepreneur and having the vision that nobody else gets. Your CPA doesn't get you a lot of times. Your marketing guy and CPAs they're never going to jive. It's those kind of equations that you don't know of yet. But hopefully that helped your question there.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Spencer, you got a question for me, jeremiah's in the comments down below. What's going on? Ashton? Thanks for joining us. Dustin mainly needing to learn more about bidding commercial work. Okay, let me finish reading that here.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Dustin said mainly needing to learn more about bidding commercial work. We have been residential ag primarily. Well, um, my first question would be what style of commercial are you going into the retail space? More restaurants are we talking? You know, multi-family? Are we talking? Subdivisions, what are are we talking and that is a question I didn't know either and I didn't have the answer to my guy but, um, I would find something so hard to cut your teeth in.

Speaker 1: 11:09

But making that jump from residential to commercial earthwork is a huge, huge jump. But hopefully you guys do a little bit of pipe or maybe some septic work. You've got to find something that holds down the residential cashflow I'm sorry, the residential thing that you're so good at right now. You've got to find a way to keep it, to start stepping off and, honestly, you're going to learn by mistake and by experience. Bid that commercial work, maybe find somebody in your area. I understand that they're not really too quick to give out information. Neither is this area, I can assure you. But that's literally why I'm doing what I'm doing currently, sitting here right now.

Speaker 1: 11:54

So, planswift I just did a video on our YouTube channel about all the softwares. Uh, just check out PsyCon. Um, I think it's a two week, last week's video anyways, but it'll say playing Swift and builders trend over my head. Go check that video out and some of the softwares that would help you kind of get from point A to point B. I think you'll find some value in that video and things that you're looking for. Planswift is a number one tool fitting into the commercial space, but that's a totally different rabbit hole. You guys don't want to sit here and listen to that. But get PlanSwift.

Speaker 1: 12:34

If you do utilities, man, start with PlanSwift and start venturing out a little bit in the pipe commercial world. My guy, that would be the first thing I would be doing. Maybe find a 100-foot, 200-foot extension on a retail establishment that's coming to town. Maybe get in front of a couple of these GCs that you kind of have an idea about that's local to your area. Maybe you have somebody that works there that you know. And hey, man, I'm just looking for some small utilities. And guys like myself, when we're bidding utility package one at all, right, we, we sometimes, especially when we're busy, we're not really going to be looking for that 80 or 100 foot, uh, because it's really hard to pull a full crew off of a three, four or five month job to go do a day or two job, right. So hit your gcs up and start very small on the utility side and see where that lands you, my guy. But I'm gonna keep rocking and rolling here. I'm gonna give me a little swig of sweaty tea.

Speaker 1: 13:33

There's two parts to this question. Sam's probably screaming at me. There's another part how do you grow in a heavy equipment operation when the person you want to promote is irreplaceable and it's hard to find someone new who cares about as much about quality as I do? No-transcript. Essentially, you've got to build systems and processes to get what's in your head and the direction and where you're wanting to go. That's exactly. You've got to get it on paper so somebody else can pick it up and read it and go oh, that's what he means by quality control. It's the little things that you don't think about, but the little things are what carry frustration points for yourself, and I don't know what quote unquote makes them irreplaceable. I understand, being an entrepreneur, there's quite a few people here that I thought were just completely irreplaceable, but through systems and processes and procedures I'm not saying that they are by any means Love my people to death, hope they never go anywhere, but I think, spencer from Florida, you've got to work on some systems and processes. Work at it as a family unit, right, and don't just stick it on yourself. But, man, you're asking the right questions, so keep steadfast there, dude.

Speaker 1: 15:33

All right, we'll go to Nick here. How do you determine 10% margin, say 30 margin? Is this market driven? Nick from tiktok dude, excellent question. Um, a question that I actually, uh, should have been asking a lot earlier in business myself. Um, our bids are not. Market is a part of the equation, but you cannot let the market drive your price. Right now, especially coming off the residual of the election and high interest rates and everything that we're dealing with, there's a lot tariffs Like. There's so many different variables that we're still dealing with and the cost hasn't really redacted right. So there's a lot of people out in the marketplace and there's a lot of new guys out here trying to just jump into the commercial world or jump into the residential world, or you know, the market oversaturation is something to also take away from this. But how do you fluctuate that margin?

Speaker 1: 16:42

Well, crew availability. Okay, how busy are your crews? How much do they want to pay you to get the job done? Because you know, I mean, if you're talking pure profit at that point, because a lot of people get in our heavy equipment world, get 10, 30 margin, but they're not even equating for indirect or overhead costs. I promise you, I was there myself until I went to a cpa that's industry, that knows my industry, and go hey, dude, what are you doing with? Where's your indirect? Where's your overhead? What's going to happen when, uh, that dozer slings a sprocket and you got to spend 25 grand? Where's that money going to come from? Like, that has to be worked in and and they teach you how to do that. But, um, crew availability what kind of engineer are we dealing with? Are we dealing with a crappy engineer that's going to be freaking?

Speaker 1: 17:34

Uh, change ordering. You know, from the last project it wasn't drawn worth of crap. So then you change ordered it out, or, um, is it client? Is this just a client that you don't like working for? Like, have you done any work with them before and it just went crap? Did it take you forever to get paid? Um, did they? You know those are the types of things that are going to directly affect your margin. But we kind of have a go no-go matrix.

Speaker 1: 18:06

But also, too, if you're needing work, you know your backlog also drives that margin. If you don't have as much work, you're going to have a lower margin. But where a lot of folks including including myself get into a trap is they don't really adjust that margin. So you already had a game here, nick, by asking the question like straight up when you do get a bunch of work, adjust that margin so that way you're not having to pull this guy off of here, pull that guy off of here and you're just making the same amount of money. But that's kind of the way I would look at margin adjustment it's you know, do you have to go rent a bunch of equipment to go do this high dollar paying job? Does it really wash out? Do you have enough rental in there? You know it's things like that that all sway margin. And of course rental is not part of margin. That's way up here in the line out of expenses.

Speaker 1: 18:59

But bidding a project with margin on it, man, you have to. And a lot of guys right now I see things getting literally the term buy-in work, gcs, general contractors, calling me up going hey, man, we bid like 62 projects this year. We got one. I'm like, oh, what are you seeing up there on the dirt side, like is a bunch of stuff fitting to kick off? I'm like, well, yeah, but not right now. We still got 60, 90 days. There's some stuff kicking off. Don't get me wrong, guys, we've also had 75 days of rain. But I hope I answered your question there, nick. Yes, the market is a part of that equation. But if you know your cost, don't ever price yourself to the market. Price yourself to your cost and take some time. Know your cost, you have to. That's how you're ever going to even know what's happening at the end of the job, right, and what's left for you and your team, or however that's supposed to. We just had K likes.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Let me hit one more here off my random running gun. How do you carve out time for strategic planning when you're stuck in the day-to-day grind of billing phone calls and being on the job site? Boy howdy, that is a question. Literally I'm living the same um scenario um, non-negotiable time, non-negotiable meetings. You have got to set yourself. Those meetings are important. Those planning meetings are like everything happens in our world in 90 day cycles, right? So if you want to start something right now, 90 days from now is when you're really going to start feeling the effects, and it takes time and it takes a lot of time.

Speaker 1: 20:55

But billing it sounds like you've got a couple billing phone calls of being on the job site. It sounds like you may need to pick somebody out and maybe sit down and go. Okay, this is everything I've got on me, just literally going through myself right now, and this is everything that's on me, what needs to be on me. I need to be handling the phone calls with production. I need to be out there on the job site to make sure we're staying on our estimate. But do I really need to be billing the work? Is that maybe somebody in our admin office? Or maybe we can create a position if there's a couple other things that we can get off of you? So delegate number one delegate tasks so we can actually take time for that hour meeting.

Speaker 1: 21:46

Because I understand that first couple of months trying to fit in strategic planning meetings and you're out there and your phone's on the freaking table the entire time. You've got to hit it. Do not disturb for 45 minutes and give them your undivided attention, because the strategic plan for your business needs to come out of your head and if you're asking these people to help you, well, you've got to give them the time to do so, right? So, um, last question here how do you communicate to your spouse or family that long hours are temporary sacrifice for long-term freedom when they're feeling neglected. Now, man, that's a deep question. That is literally a deep question, especially for myself, because I've been probably 10 years, starting our 10th year in August.

Speaker 1: 22:43

It's hard, it's hard to communicate that, even if it's a temporary job, well, I would sit down and go. Hey, I did this yesterday, actually. Actually we went down and will went with me to go look at a job, and this is kind of how I would, how I view this. But the job's way off in the woods, and I mean way off in the woods, no phone service, no internet, no casey's gas station within 10 minute trip, trip that our guys are used to dealing with, right, and I'm like man, I'm going to have to stick an office out here. It's eight and a half miles from a highway, on dirt road, nine creek crossings, this is pretty intimidating to look at just to communicate. And then I've got to ask a guy to go work out here and then I'm going to have to put an office. Anyhow, what I'm getting at is I didn't even want to ask my guys to put themselves in that two-hour, it just didn't fit.

Speaker 1: 23:49

What we're trying to do, but at the employee level, is where I was trying to cover that. But as the entrepreneur level, if you're man, me and Sarah have actually got a four-part, uh, exclusive little uh only here. I guess me and sarah are going to sit down and do a four-part series on marriage and business and how we kind of walked through it, navigated it, because it was extremely tough. It wasn't freaking rainbows and unicorns a lot of the time, it was hard stuff and it was two people trying to not give up on each other and it was difficult and it was very hard for me to communicate. Hey, look, because your spouse is sitting there. Oh, this is more important than me, so you have to communicate the importance.

Speaker 1: 24:47

As a man, I kind of had to do it with my wife. Look, my main job is to provide. So I'm out here this is me showing my love to you and you and the family. Like, yes, there is some time that they deserve from your schedule and they should set your schedule right. So like, yeah, I get it, you're working super, super long hours, but you have got to find one night a week or on weekend and set some non-negotiable family time. And I have been trying to do that, especially since the start of this year for Tuesdays and Thursdays trying to be home for five o'clock. I don't care what's going on Daddy's home, we're going to hang out.

Speaker 1: 25:28

Me and Sarah, over the years, have been more business partners, more time spent as business partners, than husband and wife, and that's extremely tough, I got to say. And so communication and compromise is the number one thing. It's sitting down and going hey, I need to tell you how I feel. And if that's not comfortable, heck. I can't tell you how many times I've communicated to Sarah and this may sound absolutely silly, but within an email of how I'm feeling, about how a meeting went. Maybe you and your spouse don't communicate great face-to-face and texting is more of your form of communication. I understand we're in that 21st century and that's how a lot of people I mean do whatever you got to do to get the emotion out, to ensure that they feel important. But they also understand and support what you're doing over here. For them, is for them, is for them. At the end of the day, all for your family, right? So I hope those are some questions that helped you guys.

Speaker 1: 26:30

A few quick call to actions. Come on back, go, subscribe to the Cyclone YouTube channel if you wouldn't mind. And while you're over there on YouTube, check out Blue Collar Business Podcast. We're on YouTube. I think we fit 5K subs on that side of things. We're here on TikTok, facebook, instagram, bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. You can sit there completely free. You don't have to have a subscription. Completely free. You can listen and watch full episodes from there.

Speaker 1: 27:03

Read all the blogs on who I'm bringing, why I'm bringing them on. But if you have a subscription, please drop a follow on a rating on the show on whatever platform you've been listening to us on. It means more than you know and I look to do these, hopefully a couple of times and, uh, definitely get these out there a little bit more and get some more interactive comments going back and forth and hopefully help some folks. So, um, what else we got? I think that's about it for today.

Speaker 1: 27:35

I have got a podcast Every Wednesday. 5 am comes out every single week, but I film at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock on Wednesdays in the afternoon and we've got a pretty cool little podcast coming up here in about 15 minutes. So I'm going to jump off here, guys. I appreciate you guys so much for hanging out and until next time we'll see you. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like. Share it with the fellers. Check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Until next time, guys.