Why You Need a Construction Coach
Michael Jordan. Bill Gates. Serena Williams. Oprah Winfrey. Kobe Bryant.
What do they all have in common?
They knew they had talent. Enough talent to be extremely successful.
They also knew that to harness that talent and use it to their advantage, they needed a coach to guide them. Someone to mentor them through the roller coaster of emotional and physical obstacles standing between them and success.
But you don't have to be an all-star athlete, business magnate, or movie star to benefit from a coach. Everyone in every industry can gain tremendous insight to help propel them forward by working with someone who has walked in those same shoes.
Why You Should Consider Hiring a Construction Coach
The residential construction industry is complex and challenging and requires a wide range of skills and knowledge. It takes a lot of know-how to be a successful residential contractor, and more often than not, the daily demands of owning and operating a remodeling or custom home-building business are so great that we don't have the time to stop and work ON our business because we're too busy working IN it.
That's where a construction coach can help.
Remodelers and custom home builders often feel like they're on an "island of one" with no one to share experiences with, discuss their business model, and help solve their business issues.
So they suffer in silence, repeating the same mistakes repeatedly until they "figure it out for themselves."
A good business coach can help you by listening, evaluating your current situation, and sharing past experiences to help you adopt the mindset you need to run a successful construction business. This valuable information can come from their experience as a general contractor or through specific business systems training. They also help eliminate the "head trash" we are all burdened with that can drive us to make questionable choices and decisions.
What Type of Coach is Best for You
There are many different types of coaches, from business to life to mindset and financial, and each one focuses on different aspects of growth for their clients. Some draw on their own work/life experiences to help mentor their clients, while others take a more academic approach.
When selecting the right coach to help you grow your residential construction business, it's important to choose someone with direct experience in what they're teaching so that you know they understand your business and your challenges on the same level and can help you move in the right direction.
It's also important to realize that some coaches are strategists only, and some offer strategy plus tactical advice. A more effective coach strategizes with you AND provides the tactical systems, processes, workflows, and templates for you to implement so you can succeed.
How a Construction Coach Can Help You
Being the owner/operator of a residential construction business often means being too busy to create better business systems because you're so preoccupied with managing the chaos around you.
But if you want to scale a profitable remodeling or custom home-building business, you need to focus ON the business. That means prioritizing developing and implementing the tools needed to elevate your business instead of just managing traffic.
Here are seven ways a construction coach can help you achieve that.
Learn New Skills And Build Confidence
One of the most significant benefits of working with a coach for your residential construction business is being able to draw on their years of experience walking in the same shoes you have.
This allows them to look at your past successes, help you shape them into repeatable processes, and increase your skill set by filling in knowledge gaps for areas in your business you might be struggling with.
For example, perhaps you've never had any formal sales training and want to create sales scripts, marketing materials, and a complete sales process.
Coaches who have mastered these exact skills can guide you into adopting them into your remodeling or custom home-building business so you can become more confident selling your work.
They can also help you dissect your pricing and estimating strategies to help you see where you are likely underselling your work and show you how this affects your financial statements.
See The Bigger Picture
When you're so focused on the everyday details, it can be easy to develop "tunnel vision" and lose the ability to see the bigger picture. A good coach can provide that objective perspective you might be missing and help you see things you may not have considered. They can offer fresh insights into your processes, identify areas of improvement, and help you implement business strategies to overcome these challenges in your construction company.
Hold You Accountable
It's human nature to find ways to get out of doing the "hard work" needed to succeed. Even when we know it's a critical growth step for ourselves or our business.
For example, how many times have you attended a webinar or trade show on business growth and thought to yourself, "I should focus on this; it will be game-changing for my construction business," but never actually did it?
A construction business coach can help you define your goals and break them down into actionable steps - holding you accountable to them by revisiting your progress regularly.
Improve Your Processes
Construction coaches who have been successful remodelers or custom home builders can guide every aspect of your residential construction business based on their years of practical experience. They can help you be more profitable by improving your estimating process, ensuring you're capturing extra costs with change orders, and identifying areas where you can increase efficiency so that you aren't consistently bleeding profit.
By implementing their best practices, you can follow proven strategies and tactics to execute work more efficiently and profitably.
Develop A Growth Mindset
Shifting focus from short-term gains to long-term success is a skill that many of us have trouble accomplishing because we're too focused on the day-to-day activities of our business.
The irony is that you plan to be in business for 10, 20, or 30+ years but we're often only focused on the next six months.
Construction coaches can help develop a growth mindset, which is essential for any business owner, and encourage you to be open to new ideas, embrace change, and continually seek out opportunities for improvement.
Improve Client Relationships
Many residential construction business owners rely on word-of-mouth referrals to gain new business. That means ensuring that your client relationship game is on point. Working with a construction coach can help you improve your people skills to develop better relationships with your clients and make the remodeling or custom home-building experience better for them. This, in turn, helps generate more business through referrals.
It also aids in gaining invaluable online social credibility and social proof from these past clients. This provides potential clients with clarity about your building process and how you are the best builder to solve their problems.
Get support when you need it
One of the most significant challenges that remodelers and construction business owners face is charging the right amount for their work. Yet all that remodelers constantly hear from homeowners is that "the other guy was cheaper." It's hard to continually hear this and try to justify why you price work the way you do.
A construction coach can be a valuable sounding board offering solutions for navigating client objections on how you've priced work, why you use change orders, and how to manage challenging clients.
The Bottom Line on Why You Need a Construction Coach
"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."
This quote couldn't be more true when it comes to evaluating whether construction business coaching can help you in your remodeling or custom home-building business.
If you've been on the fence about whether or not to invest in hiring a coach for your residential construction business, consider this:
A great coach isn't someone who will solve all your business problems for you but will teach you the strategies and tactics you need to see the bigger picture about where you want your business to grow and how to get there. They can draw on their own experiences to help you implement or improve processes, shape your mindset, offer support, and hold you accountable to the goals you've set so you can run a more profitable business.
To see how a construction coach can help change your remodeling business, click here to book a FREE STRATEGY SESSION.
