The Construction Business Blueprint #047 - Stop Trying to Grow a Broken Business

Finding more profit inside your construction business is one thing.

Keeping it is another.

In the last episode, Marc broke down the instant money moves and profit levers already sitting inside most trade and construction businesses.

In this episode, he explains why that money keeps leaking back out, and what needs to change to make the improvements stick.

The first place to look is the owner.

Your standards, decisions, habits, energy, boundaries, and the things you tolerate all set the ceiling for the business.

You can either become the bottleneck that slows everything down or the breakthrough that moves it forward.

From there, Marc looks at team and systems: how to make strategic hires instead of panic hires, how to rank your team honestly, why you should invest more time in your strongest people, and why most recurring people problems are actually system problems.

You’ll also learn why anything you explain more than twice should be documented, how to train your team to think for themselves, and how technology can help capture knowledge without everything constantly coming back to you.

Finally, Marc explains why marketing comes last.

More leads poured into a chaotic business simply creates more chaos.

Once the foundations are right, marketing becomes about visibility, trust, proof, urgency, consistency, and speaking directly to the clients you actually want.

Knowing what needs fixed isn’t enough.

The businesses that move forward are the ones that actually take action.

Subscribe for weekly videos helping trade and construction business owners get more time, more profit, more control, and a better life outside the business.

Chapters

00:00 - Why the money keeps leaking out

00:26 - You are the ceiling of the business

01:07 - Fix the owner first

02:00 - Five habits of high-performing construction owners

02:44 - Team and systems: where profit is won or lost

02:48 - Making strategic hires instead of panic hires

04:12 - How to rank your team honestly

05:41 - Fix one broken system at a time

06:28 - Why most people problems are actually system problems

06:34 - Record anything you explain more than twice

07:01 - Teaching your team to think for themselves

07:28 - Using technology to document knowledge

08:23 - Why marketing comes last

09:14 - What construction marketing actually needs to do

09:49 - Visibility creates opportunity

10:29 - Use marketing to build trust

11:59 - Create urgency in your marketing

12:46 - Consistency beats perfection

13:34 - Tell people when you’re available

14:24 - Market to the clients you actually want

15:00 - Why action matters more than information

15:50 - Pick your top moves and give them a deadline

16:21 - Why accountability helps implementation

16:47 - How to get additional support

Transcript

Where The Money Keeps Leaking

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of the Construction Business Blueprint YouTube channel. So if you are a trade and construction business owner, this is the channel where you can come to get more time, more profit, and more control and a better life outside of the business. The last video was all about instant, you know, money moves or profit levers that we can find inside of your business. But today we're going to talk about why the money keeps leaking out and how to make it stick or how to stop the leak, okay? And we're going to talk about how you are the ceiling. So again, in the last video was about money already sitting in the business, and this one is the reason why that it leaks out in the first

You Are The Business Ceiling

SPEAKER_00 0:36

place. So every construction business unit usually has a ceiling, and if you're not new to this channel, you hear that you know hear me talk about this all the time, okay? The ceiling is usually the business owner, so the business can only usually go to your capacity, you know, your standards, your habits, your decisions, your energy, and the things that you tolerate every single day. So in your business, you're one of two things. You're either the bottleneck, as in the things holding everything up, or you are the breakthrough. You are the one that solves everything and kind of moves things forward by making strategic decisions by hand, putting things in place to make everything better. So, what we're going to talk about is the first one. Fix the boss first, fix the owner first. I always have a founder first approach, and again, there's plenty of other videos on founder versus operator and all about the founder and everything else, all in a big library on this channel here. So if you're unsure of what it is, you'll be able to find it going by the titles. Check it out and come back to this. If your decisions are slow, then the business is going to be slow. So if you avoid the hard conversation, the problems will grow roots. Okay, they will embed themselves into your business. If your boundaries are weak, in other words, if you left things slide, then everything's always going to land on your desk. So if you've given somebody responsibility, you're putting a boundary in place to say, look, you own this now. If that becomes a problem, here's the problems that you can, you know, make decisions on. If it comes to this and the shit really hits the fan, yes, come to me with the issue. But without putting those boundaries in place, then everything's just gonna come to you.

Habits That Keep Profit In

SPEAKER_00 1:56

So let's talk about like five things that high performers in this industry do relentlessly. Okay, they make decisions quickly and especially the hard decisions, they have the conversation everybody's been putting off, they operate with absolute clarity and to a plan and not with chaos. They protect their energy, okay, so they're very aware of what drains them and what you know pushes them forward, and they protect that. They have very good brandies in place, and they also protect their work or time to work on the business, so they protect their founder time, time to work on the business and do the things that the business needs in order to push it on. Everything in your business improves when you improve. And again, at our live event a few weeks ago, that's well documented again on this channel. We've got we'll give you the insights of those that private room, but you know, we talked about the founder first, and if the founder is off, the business is

Hiring That Frees You Up

SPEAKER_00 2:42

off. So next we're going to talk about the team and systems. So this is where you either print money or you are burning it or throwing it out the back door. So let's talk about the hire that either frees you or it drains you. Okay, so most owners in this business, in this industry, sorry, will hire in a panic, they'll know that they just need help, but don't really know where, haven't identified it, so they'll just take on more labour. Okay, but that's not a strategy. Ask who is the person that I can bring in that removes the most work from my plate and frees me up the lead, or is there somebody in this business right now that can take on more responsibility? And when I said I need to identify what it is that's taking on up all my time, what it is that I hate doing, what it is that drains me, and then figure out how to not figure out, but obviously we talked about that in the last few things about mapping out what that rule looks like. And again, we have that rule definition blueprint that I offered to anybody on the last call. If you want that, it to tells you how to design or delegate any role from anybody in your business. If you need that, drop the word blueprint below, I'd be happy to share that with you again. Taking anybody through that process, what frees you up the most? It might be admin, it might be a site manager, QS, or even just a PA or a VA, you know, a virtual assistant or or a private assistant or whatever it is. But if a hire costs you more time managing them, then it wasn't strategic, it was a panic hire, or that rule wasn't ready to be to be to be hired yet or defined yet because again, you hadn't looked at what good looks like, you hadn't mapped it out, you hadn't done the work before bringing them in, so you brought them in too soon. Okay, so another quick way we can do this with team and systems is rank your team from not to ten, honestly, with zero motion. Okay, so not on their personality, all of that comes into account, but you know, basing on facts and figures, not because you don't like the way he talks or they don't they don't like the way he shows up or you don't like his whatever, okay. Not the fives are costing you money. You need to train them, you need to reposition them, and as in either you know, put them down a peg, you know, demog them, or you need to get rid of them. You need to move on. Okay, so fire and fast, like we said before, if they're leaking money, fire fast and replace them. Sixes and sevens are okay, but they're stagnant. Okay, they need clarity and a pathway. So that's kind of somebody you'd bring in and you'd have a conversation with to say, look, how do you think we can improve things moving forward? That's what six and sevens kind of need to have that conversation with. Eights and nines and above are your drivers. You need to protect them, you need to, you know, wrap them in cottonwood, you need to pay them fairly, you need to maybe give them incentives or bonuses, reward them and develop them. Invest in some training and some time and effort into those guys because they are they're the ones who are going to push this business forward. What happens though is most business owners in this industry spend 80% of their time and attention on holding on or holding the hands of the four and fives, okay, while you ignore or take for granted the eights and the nines, you need to flip that. We we talked about a process there, follow that process and you will get rid of dead wood or fix the problems with your team very, very quickly. In

Fix Systems And Record Standards

SPEAKER_00 5:39

terms of systems, fix one broken system at a time. So we all know okay, that there are so many problems in your business. Okay, there could be so many things going on at once, but focus on one thing before moving forward. So fix one thing at a time. So could that be the handover between the office and site? So pricing the jobs, you actually putting the job in practice or getting underway. There could be a disconnector, it could be the variation process, extra work's getting missed. Okay, how are your variations being handled? It could be your job costing. So, how are you getting to how are you getting to your price? Have you when's the last time you reviewed your price and your costing? It could be how your order materials are checking invoices, or it could be aftercar, it could be project handover. Pick the one that removes the most chaos or it's causing you the most pain, or the one you that you have less of a hold on right now. Most of your problems are system problems and not people problems. That's very important to understand. The next one would be record anything. This is again more for systems, but it it falls into systems and team. Record anything that you repeat more than twice. So if you're explaining the same thing week on week, then the problem isn't or may not be the person. It's that you have never documented the standard. It could be a loom, a voice note, a checklist, which means you don't need to ask me this again. Or if they're coming to you with a question again, I've talked about this at length. If a team member's coming to you with a query, they're relying on you or think that they're not, they don't have the authority or the knowledge or the confidence to make that decision themselves. Always answer a question with a question. If someone's asking you how to do something, ask them the question back, well, what do you think the best method is, or what do you think we should do here? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. You know, what are you know? Often I've been told the quickest way to learn is I've asked the question, they've went, you already know the answer to that, and they've walked off. I'm not necessarily saying do that because you're leaving that the interpretation, but ask the question back and say, Well, what do you think we should do here? And get them thinking for themselves. Because again, initiative is taught, it's learned, it's not just something you're born with. I have a client actually at the minute, really successful guy down in Dublin, who owns a plumbing and heating business, and what he has identified was there are certain tasks in his business that he struggled to let go of because he had the knowledge, he had the training. It was going to take a long time for him to pass this knowledge on or sit and train somebody, and he wanted to spend his time doing other things. So, what he did do, which was fantastic, was he bought those meta glasses, those same things that you see guys spunking time over, wasting time doing stupid videos, okay, and and you know, TikToks and whatever else. Using this to your advantage, he actually, you know, say it was a how to wire an actuator or how to fix a sticking solenoid valve or how to solve a problem on the border. He recorded the whole thing in front of him, exactly how he done it, exactly how he broke it down, and he talked his way through the whole process, and that is now a training video for his guys and his team. Like, that's using AI, that's using these this technology to your advantage.

Marketing That Builds Real Trust

SPEAKER_00 8:24

So the next one would be marketing, and it comes last on purpose, okay? So notice this is the last thing we talk about because if everything above is broken, more leads just means more chaos. And I often talk about this kind of issue with marketing. You know, if your business is suffering, marketing's not going to solve the problem, it's actually gonna heighten it, okay? It's gonna put more fuel in the fire essentially. But if you're invisible, you're forgettable, and forgettable won't win work. So let's let's talk about marketing and how marketing actually works. And a lot of people focus on the wrong thing in this industry, and again, that's because none of us have had any experience of marketing, and maybe the only experience you've had with marketing is somebody absolutely torching you in your DMs on Instagram about how could you deal with another hundred clients right now, or would you like more leads into your business, or blah blah blah. We've all got those DMs hot and heavy, flat out, and we've taken whatever they have suggested and we've rammed it without really kind of any knowledge without knowing what is better. Okay, but forget ads for right now, forget funnels, forget fancy dancing TikToks. Marketing in construction is very, very simple. Showing the right people the right proof at the right time so that they can trust you enough to move on it. Your marketing is your company profile, it's your brochure, it's whatever it may be. So everyone's looking you up online. So whether someone has recommended you to somebody, whether they're searching for you online, everybody's gonna look you up. Either they're gonna search now on AI, ChatGPT, or Claude, they are Googling you, they're doing whatever they need to do, but they're gonna do their homework on you because you're out there and you're visible. So visibility creates opportunity. Okay, so most of you do brilliant work that nobody sees. Visibility is a you know is a currency, not vanity. So 80,000 views means absolutely nothing, okay? But pen clients means everything. So we need to focus on the vanity metrics of you know, okay, I got so many views and so many comments and so many likes is absolutely irrelevant because how many of those guys actually turned into pain clients? So some of us are marketing for the wrong reasons, and again, we have a whole lesson inside our our our mentorship of how to turn views or or or likes into paying clients because it only matters if those guys are actually paying and becoming customers. So you need to build trust. Your your marketing needs to build trust. Okay, it's not just having a fancy video that people are entertained by. What your market needs to do is build trust. So before and after walkthroughs, testimonials, okay, is important, it's something some people miss out on. A video of the client opening the door to the finished room. Clients aren't just ban the end product, like the the the furniture or the windows or the you know the the kitchen, they're ban you know the confidence of the end product, you know, the warranty, what stands over, how it feels to them. You know, the the journey, the customer journey of the communication that they made the right choice and it was delivered on time, that it was done the right way, that there was no hassle, there was no issues. They're all the things that build trust. Just showing a video of an end product is great, but show the journey of how you got there because that's what differentiates you from your competitor. Because, like I always say, the competition out there is trash. The majority of trade and construction business owners cannot communicate, they don't answer the phone, they don't show up when they're gonna show up, they don't produce the product that they promised that they could. So if you can prove and show through your marketing that you can do those things and have your clients say those things or talk them through the journey of how that happened, then you're going to win. You're gonna build trust, you're gonna build authority, you're gonna show that you're professionals, you're gonna show that you can back up and do what you say that you can do. Like everybody else says they can do it, you're gonna show and prove that you can, and you have evidence

Urgency Consistency And Better Clients

SPEAKER_00 11:56

of that. Another thing you can do with your with your marketing is create urgency so nobody buys without tension. Okay, so rather than saying, okay, we're we're now taking on projects in September, okay, or our diary is open in September. Say I've got two spaces left now in September. That's it, that beats you know, you see that we're now taking bookings for July, we're now taking bookings for August. Be specific about the slot, create some sort of urgency, create that you you know that the share that the fact that you're actually busy, that your time matters, not just an open book. You've got a couple of slots free, even if it is, we have got a couple of surveys free for next week. If you want to book in to have us look at the project that you've always been wanting to get done, reach out today and you could have one of those two slots. Then post that the slots are gone. So again, create the urgency and show that you're in demand and that it's boxed off. You know, that will get people shown that you're a serious operator. The next one is consistency beats perfection. Okay, so don't be one of these guys that never posts because you don't have the right shiny thing or the nice video or the nice whatever. Consistency beats perfection, you know. So, like two stories a day, document your day. It doesn't need to be polished, it just needs to be, you know, like I say, visibility is important, showing that you're active, you're live. If somebody looks you up and seen you haven't posted since happy new year to all our clans in 2025, then they're gonna say, This guy isn't busy. You know, what's he been doing? Put you against a competitor that's posting on a daily basis, it's posting three or four times a week, that's showing they're gonna go, that guy's active, that guy's flannel. I can actually see his work, I can see what he's doing right now, not post that he has on from 2023 because it's not irrelevant. So we talked about creating urgency, but also tell people that you are taking on work. Don't just assume that people know that you're available, you have to let them know. Most of you can actually look fully booked online because you've never shown people that you have the space. So, again, it's important to show people that you're ready and available to be taking on work and to be taking on surveys. So don't be afraid to post it out there. But again, like I say, caveat that with being specific. We've got a few slots here, even if you have 10. We have a few slots here available. Be quick, these will fill up fast, or diaries in high demand, blah blah blah, and then post when those things are taken again. But always advertise if a job's been cancelled or something's happened again, post it. Guys, we have had an unforeseen happen, something's happened in one of the projects that it's been delayed. We now have availability next week that we never usually have. If you want to feel this slot, act fast, DM our team now, etc. etc. Speak to the right audience, okay? So do not cast your net wide with your marketing. Think of who your best clients are, your best projects you've ever done, even the type of client you've dealt with, high, high net worth, really good area, whatever else. Think of that client profile, think of who they are, what they you know liked about your service or what they why they chose you in the first place, and what about them that you liked, and market to that one specific person because you want more of those good clients. You don't just want any client, so be specific with your marketing, market your you know to your best clients, your with your your best kind of projects, not the masses.

Deadlines Accountability And Getting Help

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So, guys, as always, all of this is worthless without action. Don't listen to this and then do nothing about it. I always say to my clients, the live events and every training, you need to leave here with something you can implement straight away. Don't make a load of notes or have a workbook and then leave the workbook in the van and never do anything about it. You know, most people agree with my advice and they'll walk away but never actually do anything about it, or that can happen. And the ones who do are the ones who are winning. Okay, so taking action matters here. You could listen to all the podcasts or watch the biggest YouTubes in the world and go and change absolutely nothing in your business. So don't just take this as motivation, go and do something about it. So knowing the levers doesn't really matter. Pulling the lever does. Seeing the system gap doesn't matter, but fixing the system gap or bridging the gap does. Realising where the money is hiding or where the money is leaking doesn't matter, but fixing the leak or collecting the money does. So go over the last two videos, pick your top three move across all the videos, not 10, not 20, just two or three. Give each one a deadline. Without a deadline, a plan is just a dream. It's called Parkinson's law. The task will take whatever time you give to foot, okay? Make it public. I'd love to hear about it. So, you know, drop me a message. When you say it privately or you keep it to yourself, it's optional. When you say it publicly, it becomes a commitment. So I'd love to hear from anybody out here who has taken these things and actually taking these actions and putting them on board. Tell me what you've committed to, tell me what's changing your business. I'd love to hear it. And again, if you have watched this last couple of series or like these last couple of videos and you're still kind of struggling with the implementation, first and foremost, I'm not surprised. Okay, accountability, support, having somebody to ask questions is paramount. It's what makes all this go together. You can have all the will in the world, but somebody in your corner to help you along with it is what makes the difference. It's really actually gets you to do the work. And again, someone there for help, support, and guidance. So if you're still struggling with any of this advice, please reach out. Just DM the word discovery or comment the word discovery below, and I'd be more than happy to set up a strategy call. I keep a few spaces free every week for my private clients, but I also keep a few every week for new clients or somebody who needs help in this industry because that's what we're all about here helping to prove the lives of every construction business owner one step at a time.