The Profit Builder Unscripted

The Power of Building With Intention

• Vicki Suiter • Episode 63

Share episode

Let us know what you think? Send me a note!

Ever feel like your business is just growing on its own — without a real plan behind it? That was Benjamin’s story.

His remodeling business was doing “fine,” but he was running on autopilot — taking what came, working hard, and hoping it would all pay off someday.

Then one simple shift changed everything.

When he started treating his business like one of his projects — with a clear goal, a plan, and a budget — things took off. His profits, his confidence, and even his time off grew in ways he never imagined.

In this episode, I share Benjamin’s journey and the key principle that turned his business from “doing okay” to thriving.

If you’ve ever wondered what clarity and a solid plan could do for your bottom line, you’ll want to hear this.

🎥 Watch or listen now to discover how a little intentionality can build massive results in your contracting business.

Resources:

Connect with Vicki on social media:


If you love listening to this podcast, please leave a review in Apple Podcasts.


Building a great contracting business doesn't just happen. It requires being intentional and having a clear outcome, just like when you're doing a construction project. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you some key ways that you can do that in your business that I'm going to share a story of my client, Benjamin, that you will see made a huge difference in terms of his joy and his satisfaction of his business.Also in the profits and the money that he got to take home.
Hi, I'm Vicki Suiter. Welcome back to the Profit Builder Unscripted.

Do you have goals for your contracting business? I have a client that I've been working with for about five years and Benjamin, when we first started working together, had been in business for several years and I asked him that question. I said, do you have goals for your business? Do you have a budget for your business? And he was like, nope, we just kind of take what we get on the bottom line and it's been okay. We've continued to grow. I got a great team. 

I said, well, what would you like? Have you thought about that? And he was like, no, I just figure that we're gonna continue to grow and we're gonna continue to get more work and then we'll add more people and it'll all be great. And then someday I'll make like gobs of money. I said, well, I said, would it be okay with you if you actually had a plan for how you were gonna make gobs of money. Would it be okay if you that actually happened sooner versus later? And he's like, yeah, sure who wouldn't right and you know, it's funny because as Benjamin shared this with me I You know, I I got to thinking about the fact that I see this a lot. I see it a lot where We as business owners tend to go into business.

And we just work really hard and then our businesses start to grow and we start to maybe make more money and maybe we start adding staff and then maybe get a bigger office. And we do all these things that feel like they're the right things to do, but oftentimes without a clear goal of where it is that we want to take our businesses and how much money do we want to make.

So one of the first things that I did with Benjamin is I said, hey, why don't we start to set some goals? Why don't we start to put an operating budget in place for your business? And how about if we set some goals about how much you personally would like to make and how much time you would like to take off from your business? And where do you want to grow your business to? I said, but let's just even start with let's do a budget.

Like, let's figure that out and let's do that with a plan for how much money you would like to make. How much do you want to be able to take back and out of your business? And how much do you want to invest back into your business? Like, let's make a financial plan, kind of like you do on a project, right? When you do a project, it's not any different, right? You start out with, you assess the current condition of any project that you're doing.

And then before you start building it, you actually set some goals. You get a blueprint or a schematic or, you know, specs about what's it going to look like when it's done. I said, then you start with the end in mind and you look backwards and you go, okay, what's it going to take to get from where what the starting point is to what the goal is. And in that process, when you're starting with the end in mind and looking backwards, you're going, okay, so what's it gonna cost, right? You're doing a budget, you're doing a schedule, you're figuring out like who's gonna work on that, how is it gonna, you know, how's it gonna flow? They said, let's do the same thing with your business. And so we did in that first year, Benjamin made about 10 % more than he had been the year before, super excited. We're now three years in and Benjamin has increased his revenue by nearly 300%.

He has increased his own compensation by that much. He has grown his team. He has increased the amount of money that he has in cash reserves in his business. He's been able to invest back into his business in ways that before were really a struggle and now are easier. Cash always is there when he needs it. His taxes get paid on time and there's never any worries about, you know, did I, put enough money aside when April 15th comes and I have to write the check. like, that's all part of what he plans into doing a budget. And it's funny because, you know, when I first brought this up with Benjamin, he said, like, budgets, like, I've done them before, I never follow them, right? Like, maybe you can relate to that. Like, we think of budgets as a constraint, but the truth is doing a budget in your business, like it did for Benjamin, and I've seen it.

So many other times with clients that I've worked with over these many years is, know, when you set a plan for what you want to build, it sets a different trajectory to how you think about what you do, how you do work, how you plan, how you, like it shifted this whole thing for him about marketing and business development, right? He started to set a different goal. And he also in the process of setting a higher revenue goal.

We asked him a bunch of questions about like, kind of work did he want to do? And it, he was like, you know, he described what that was. And I said, okay, so how are you marketing to get that kind of work? What are you doing? Let's make sure that we build that into the budget too. Let's make sure that we build into it, everything that's going to support you building the business that you really want. And what's really cool is he's doing more of those projects now because he started really instead of, and it was also great, it started to shift how his marketing was happening. Because up until that point, he felt like he kind of was doing this bulleted approach, right? The shotgun approach of just going after anything that he could. And when we define what's the kind of projects that you want, it started to get much more focused, right? So it's a whole thing of setting goals, setting financial goals setting the kind of goals that he wanted to have in terms of projects that he wanted to do, which also, by the way, yielded a higher margin for him also. it started to, and then once he set the goal, starting with the end in mind, looking backwards, then he started to alter his behavior in terms of how he was doing marketing and business development. So the whole thing of doing a budget is not the goal is it's like kind of like doing a blueprint or schematic. 

The goal is not to have it be a constraint. But the goal, in fact, is to have you help you have more clarity so that you have more confidence so that you can take more powerful actions. Always, always, always, the thing that I have found time and again, and I've been doing this for over 30 years with contractors, I have seen, I have helped hundreds of contractors make more money than they ever dreamed possible in their business because I have helped them understand this one principle the more you can be clear about where you want to go and the more you can be clear about where you are on the path to getting there and have a relationship with your data and your information and feedback. to be, you know, he didn't just set it and forget it with the budget, just like you don't on a project, right? Like every month he's looking at it. He's looking at his budget versus actual, and he's looking at like, do I need to make adjustments? He's looking at his backlog and looking at how much work do I have in front of me?

Just those two simple pieces of feedback started to have him have a different relationship with his numbers, and it started to help him have more clarity so he had more confidence to know, all right, where do I have to adjust? Do I have to cut expenses? Do I have to sell more? How much more do I have to sell? Like when he could see it, he could do something about it. And that's always the case is that when we can see it, we can do something about it. And it keeps us out of the...

You out of that realm of just worry and hope or and you know when in in benjamin's case. Like he didn't necessarily like he was doing okay. But he's he's like right now he's doing exponentially better and it's not because and he will tell you you know we had this conversation a couple weeks ago he will tell you it's not because. It was something you know something just fell in his lap. He said it was soon as i got more intentional and clear about what i wanted to have happen.

I started to act differently. I started to do things differently. I started to do marketing differently. I started to engage with my team differently. I started to pay attention more to the data because when I could see where I was headed before I got there, right, always looking up at like looking at his budget, looking at his forecast, looking at his backlog, when he was just looking at those numbers, it helped him stay on track. So.

You know my in my question to you is if you would like to make more money on the bottom line if you want to you know have a greater sense of. Agency over what it is you're doing in your business and you want to drive it to a certain you know certain place. Set some goals like put it in writing get a budget in place like those kind of things start to formulate just like you do a project.

What's, you know, what am I going for? What's the goal I'm going for? I hope you found this to be helpful. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you would like some more information for me about the work that I do with clients in terms of helping them have better clarity about their numbers, about their data so that it can help you make more powerful decisions in your business, feel free to reach out to me. My email is vicki, v-i-c-k-i at suiterbusinessbuilders.com. My information is also below. And again, feel free to drop a note. ⁓ Love to hear what your thoughts are. And if you found this to be valuable, make sure to subscribe or join ⁓ so that you don't miss any other episodes. do content like this all the time. I do videos every week or podcasts every week. 

And it's all about you know how to be more profitable. It's about building great teams. Today was about being more profitable, but you know, it's the stuff that I've been doing with clients for many years that I feel very passionate about sharing with you here in order to help you be more profitable, sustainably profitable in your contracting business. All right, thanks for being here. Thanks for being part of the conversation with me today and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Profit Builder Unscripted.


Head Shot

Vicki Suiter

Host